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E L I A N A. 



EL I AN A 



THE HITHERTO UNCOLLECTED WRITINGS 



CHAELES LAMB. 



The king's chaff is as good as other people's corn." — Old Proverb. 



NEW YORK: 
HURD AND HOUGHTON. 

BOSTON: WILLIAM VEAZIE. 

1864. 



o 



<? 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1834, by 

WILLIAM VEAZIE, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



boston: 

STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SON, 
No. 5, Water Street. 



PREFACE. 



Sir Thomas More, in the dedicatory epistle of the " Utopia," 
addressed to his friend Peter Giles, says, speaking of the 
readers of books in his day, " There be some so unkind and 
ungenteel, that though they take great pleasure and delecta- 
tion in the work, yet, for all that, they cannot find in their 
hearts to love the author thereof, nor to afford him a good 
word ; being much like uncourteous, unthankful, and churlish 
guests, which, when they have with good and dainty meat 
well filled their bellies, depart home, giving no thanks to the 
feast-maker." * 

This, and indeed all that the wise, witty, and learned Lord 
High Chancellor says of the reading public in the times of 
Henry VIII., — a literary San Marino, — is true of the read- 
ing public of the present day. 

If, however, it is the misfortune of most authors to be 
perused by such unkind and unthankful readers as those Sii 
Thomas speaks of, there are a few favorite and fortunate pen- 
men that not only obtain their readers' admiration, but also 
win their reader's love. 

Such a one is Charles Lamb. Other writers may have 
more readers ; but none have so many true, hearty, enthu- 
siastic admirers as he. If to the- public at large — the 
miscellaneous rabble of whom Milton speaks so scornfully in 
"Paradise Regained" — he is but little known, by the truest 

* I quote from the old translation of Raphe Robinson. 

[▼] 



VI PREFACE. 

and most intelligent lovers of literature he is read with 
unusual pleasure and delight. If ordinary readers — those 
who — 

" Distinguish not rare peacock from vile swan, 
Nor Mareotic juice from Ccecuban " — 

find but little in him to praise or to admire, with all lovers and 
appreciators of true wit, genuine humor, fine fancy, beautiful 
imagination, and exquisite pathos, he is a prodigious favorite. 
Indeed, there is something — a nameless, indescribable charm — 
about this author's productions, which captivates and enrav- 
ishes his readers. By those whose mental palate is fine 
enough to taste and appreciate the exquisite flavor of his 
style, and to relish and enjoy his rich, peculiar, delicious 
humor, the " Essays of Elia " are read with extraordinary 
satisfaction, and prized as highly as the curate in " Don 
Quixote " prized the " Diana " of Gil Polo. 

And though Lamb found many admiring readers in his 
lifetime, since his death his fame and popularity have in- 
creased greatly. Then he was generally looked upon as a 
mere eccentric, — a person of more quaintness than humor, 
of more oddity than genius. Now he is acknowledged to be 
a most beautiful and original genius, — one of the " fixed stars 
of the literary system," whose light will never pale or grow 
dim, and whose peculiar brightness and beauty will long be 
the wonder and delight of a choice and select number of 
men and women. 

Yet, despite all their love and admiration of Charles 
Lamb, — nay, rather in consequence of it, — his admirers 
must blame him for what Mr. Barron .Field was pleased to 
eulogize him for, — writing so little. Undoubtedly, in most 
authors, suppression in writing would be a virtue. In Lamb 
it was a fault. Instead of writing only two volumes of essays, 



PREFACE. VU 

Elia should have written a dozen. He had read, heard, 
thought, and seen enough to furnish matter for twice that 
number. He himself confesseth, in a letter written a year 
or two before his death, that he felt as if he had a thousand 
essays swelliug within him. Oh that Elia, like Mr. Spectator, 
had printed himself out before he died ! 

But notwithstanding Lamb's fame and popularity, notwith- 
standing all readers of his inimitable Essays lament that one 
who wrote so delightfully as Elia did should have written so 
little, there has not yet been published a complete collection 
of his writings. The standard edition of his works, edited 
by Talfourd, is far from being complete. Surely the author 
of " Ion " was unwise in not publishing all of Lamb's pro- 
ductions. Carlyle said he wanted to know all about Margaret 
Fuller, even to the color of her stockings ; and the admirers 
of Elia want to possess every scrap and fragment of his 
inditing. They cannot let oblivion have the least " notelet " 
or " essaykin " of his. For, however inferior to his best pro- 
ductions these uncollected articles may be, they must contain 
more or less of Lamb's humor, sense, and observation. Some- 
what of his delightful individuality must be stamped upon 
them. In brief, they cannot but contain much that would 
amuse and entertain all admirers of their author. For my- 
self, I would rather read the poorest of these uncollected 
Essays of Elia than the best productions of some of the most 
popular of modern authors. " The king's chaff is as good 
as other people's corn," saith the old proverb. " There is 
a pleasure arising from the very bagatelles of men renowned 
for their knowledge and genius," says Goldsmith ; " and we 
receive with veneration those pieces, after they are dead, 
which would lessen them in our estimation while living: 
sensible that we shall enjoy them no more, we treasure up, 



Vlll PREFACE. 

as precious relics, every saying and word that has escaped 
them ; but their writings of every kind we deem inesti- 
mable." 

For years I have been hopefully and patiently waiting for 
somebody to collect and publish these scattered and all but 
forgotten articles of Lamb's ; but at last, seeing no likelihood 
of its being done at present, if ever in my day, and fearing 
that I might else never have an opportunity of perusing these 
strangely neglected writings of my favorite author, I com- 
menced the task of searching out and discovering them 
myself for mine own delectation. And after a deal of fruitless 
and aimless labor (for, unlike Johannes Scotus Erigena, in 
his quest of a treatise of Aristotle, I had no oracle to con- 
sult), after spending nearly as many weeks in turning over the 
leaves of I know not how many volumes of old, dusty, musty, 
fusty periodicals, as Mr. Vernon ran miles after a butterfly, I 
was amply rewarded for all my pains ; for I not only found 
all, or nearly all, of Lamb's uncollected writings that are 
spoken of in his " Life and Letters," but a goodly number of 
articles from his pen which neither he nor his biographer has 
even alluded to. As I read these (to me) new essays, poems, 
and letters of Elia, I could not but feel somewhat indignant 
that such excellent productions of such an excellent writer 
should have been " underkept and down supprest " so long. I 
was as much ravished with these new-found Essays of Lamb's 
as good old Nicholas Gerbelius (see Burton's "Anatomy of 
Melancholy," partition ii., section 2, member 4) was with a 
few Greek authors restored to light. If I had had one or 
two loving, enthusiastic admirers of Charles Lamb to enjoy 
with me the delight of perusing these uncollected Elias, I 
should have been " all felicity up to the brim." For with me, 
as with Michael de Montaigne and Hans Andersen, there is 



PREFACE. IX 

no pleasure without communication ; and therefore, partly 
to please myself, and partly to please the admirers of Elia, 
I have collected and published all of Charles Lamb's writings 
that I found "sleeping" in out-of-fashion books and out-of-date 
periodicals. 

To ninety-nine hundredths of their author's readers, the 
contents of this volume will be as good as manuscript ; and 
not only will the contents of " Eliana " be new to most read- 
ers, but they will be found to be not wholly unworthy of him 
who wrote the immortal dissertation on " Roast Pig." Albeit 
not to be compared with Elia's best and most finished pro- 
ductions, many of the articles in this collection contain some 
of the finest qualities and peculiarities of his genius ; and 
most of them — especially the essays and sketches — are, as 
good old Bishop Hall would say, flowered with the blossoms 
of learning and observation. 

Though the generality of readers may not find much to 
amuse or entertain them in this volume, without doubt all 
genuine admirers, all true lovers, of the gentle, genial, delight- 
ful Elia, to whom almost every word of their favorite author's 

inditing is — 

"Farsed with pleasaunce," 

will be mightily pleased with these productions of his inimi- 
table pen, now first collected together. 



J. E. B. 



Chelsea, May, 1864. 



CONTENTS. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 

PAGE 

TABLE-TALK 17 

THE GENTLE GIANTESS 26 

THE REYNOLDS GALLERY 31 

GUY FAUX 34 

A VISION OP HORNS 46 

JOHN KEMBLE, AND GODWIN'S TRAGEDY OP " ANTONIO " . . 54 
THE GOOD CLERK, A CHARACTER ; WITH SOME ACCOUNT OP 

" THE COMPLETE ENGLISH TRADESMAN " 59 

REMINISCENCE OP SIR JEEPERY DUNSTAN 67 

ON A PASSAGE IN " THE TEMPEST " 70 

THE MONTHS 74 

BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF MR. LISTON 80 

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OP MR. MUNDEN, IN A LETTER TO THE EDI- 
TOR OF THE " LONDON MAGAZINE " 91 

THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEFUNCT 95 

THE RELIGION OF ACTORS 104 

THE ASS 108 

IN RE SQUIRRELS 112 

ESTIMATE OP DE FOe's SECONDARY NOVELS 114 

POSTSCRIPT TO THE " CHAPTER ON EARS " 117 

ELIA TO HIS CORRESPONDENTS 119 

[Xi] 



Xll 



CONTENTS. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES (continued). 

PAGE 
UNITARIAN PROTESTS, IN A LETTER TO A FRIEND OF THAT 

PERSUASION NEWLY MARRIED 122 

ON THE CUSTOM OF HISSING AT THE THEATRES J WITH SOME 

ACCOUNT OF A CLUB OF DAMNED AUTHORS 128 

CHARLES LAMB'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY 137 

ON THE DEATH OF COLERIDGE 139 

THE OLD ACTORS 141 

CAPTAIN STARKEY 143 

A POPULAR FALLACY, THAT A DEFORMED PERSON IS A LORD . 148 
LETTER TO AN OLD GENTLEMAN WHOSE EDUCATION HAS BEEN 

NEGLECTED 151 

ON THE AMBIGUITIES ARISING FROM PROPER NAMES .... 159 

ELIA ON HIS "CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD" 161 

THE LAST PEACH 163 

REFLECTIONS IN THE PILLORY 167 

A Saturday's dinner 172 

a character of the late elia. by a friend 181 



THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER. A Farce 



189 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES 221 



TALES. 

REMINISCENCES OF JUKE JUDKINS, ESQ., OF BIRMINGHAM . . 337 

CUPID'S REVENGE 346 

THE DEFEAT OF TIME ; OR, A TALE OF THE FAIRIES . . . 367 

MARIA HOWE ; OR, THE EFFECT OF WITCH STORIES .... 375 

SUSAN YATES ; OR, FIRST GOING TO CHURCH 384 

ARABELLA HARDY ; OR, THE SEA VOYAGE ......... 392 



CONTENTS. xm 



POEMS. 

PAGE 
EXISTENCE, CONSIDERED IN ITSELF, NO BLESSING. FROM THE 

LATIN OF PALINGENIUS 403 

THE PARTING SPEECH OF THE CELESTIAL MESSENGER TO THE 

POET. FROM THE LATIN OF PALINGENIUS, IN THE ZODIA- 

cus vit^: 404 

HERCULES PACIFICATUS. A TALE FROM SUIDAS 406 

A FRAGMENT 410 

FOR THE ALBUM OF MISS , FRENCH TEACHER AT MRS. 

GISBORN'S SCHOOL, ENFIELD 412 

TO C. ADERS, ESQ., ON HIS COLLECTION OF PAINTINGS BY THE 

OLD GERMAN MASTERS 413 



LETTERS. 

TO A BOOKSELLER 417 

TO J. PAYNE COLLIER . 418 

TO JOSEPH COTTLE 419 

TO THE SAME 420 

TO THE SAME 421 

TO A FARMER AND HIS WIFE 422 

TO S. T. COLERIDGE 424 

TO THOMAS HOOD 425 

TO THE SAME 427 

TO LEIGH HUNT 428 

TO MRS. SHELLEY 430 

TO THE EDITOR OF THE " TABLE-BOOK " 432 

TO THE SAME 433 

TO P. G. PATMORE 434 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 



ESSAYS AND SKETCHES. 



TABLE-TALK* 

It is a desideratum in works that treat de re cidinarid, 
that we have no rationale of sauces, or theory of mixed 
flavors : as to show why cabbage is reprehensible with 
roast beef, laudable with bacon ; why the haunch of 
mutton seeks the alliance of currant-jelly, the shoulder 
civilly declineth it ; why loin of veal (a pretty prob- 
lem), being itself unctuous, seeketh the adventitious 
lubricity of melted butter, — and why the same part in 
pork, not more oleaginous, abhorreth from it ; why the 
French bean sympathizes with the flesh of deer ; why 
salt fish points to parsnip, brawn makes a dead-set at 
mustard ; why cats prefer valerian to heart's-ease, old 
ladies vice versa, — though this is rather travelling out 
of the road of the dietetics, and may be thought a 
question more curious than relevant ; why salmon (a 
strong sapor per se) fortifieth its condition with the 
mighty lobster-sauce, whose embraces are fatal to the 
delicater relish of the turbot ; why oysters in death rise 
up against the contamination of brown sugar, while 

* From the " London Athenaeum," 1834. 

2 [17] 



18 TABLE-TALK. 

they are posthumously amorous of vinegar; why the 
sour mango and the sweet jam by turns court and are 
accepted by the compilable mutton-hash, — she not yet 
decidedly declaring for either. We are as yet but in 
the empirical stage of cookery. We feed ignorantly, 
and want to be able to give a reason of the relish that 
is in us ; so that, if Nature should furnish us with a 
new meat, or be prodigally pleased to restore the 
phoenix, upon a given flavor, we might be able to pro- 
nounce instantly, on philosophical principles, what the 
sauce to it should be, — what the curious adjuncts. 

The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action 
by stealth, and to have it found out by accident. 

'Tis unpleasant to meet a beggar. It is painful to 
deny him ; and, if you relieve him, it is so much out of 
your pocket. 

Men marry for fortune, and sometimes to please their 
fancy ; but, much oftener than is suspected, they con- 
sider what the world will say of it, — how such a woman 
in their friends' eyes will look at the head of a table. 
Hence we see so many insipid beauties made wives of, 
that could not have struck the particular fancy of any 
man that had any fancy at all. These I call furniture 
wives ; as men buy furniture pictures, because they suit 
this or that niche in their dining-parlors. 

Your universally cried-up beauties are the very last 
choice which a man of taste would make. What 
pleases all cannot have that individual charm which 
makes this or that countenance engaging to you, and to 



TABLE-TALK. 19 

you only perhaps, you know not why. What gained 
the fair Gunnings titled husbands, who, after all, turned 
out very sorry wives? Popular repute. 

It is a sore trial when a daughter shall marry against 
her father's approbation. A little hard-heartedness, 
and aversion to a reconcilement, is almost pardonable. 
After all, Will Dockwray's way is, perhaps, the wisest. 
His best-loved daughter made a most imprudent match ; 
in fact, eloped with the last man in the world that her 
father would have wished her to marry. All the world 
said that he would never speak to her again. For 
Dionths she durst not write to him, much less come near 
him. But, in a casual rencounter, he met her in the 
streets of Ware, — Ware, that will long remember the 
mild virtues of William Dockwray, Esq. What said 
the parent to his disobedient child, whose knees faltered 
imder her at the sight of him? "Ha, Sukey ! is it 
you?" with that benevolent aspect with which he paced 
the streets of Ware, venerated as an angel : " come 
and dine with us on Sunday." Then turning away, 
and again turning back, as if he had forgotten some- 
thing, he added, "And, Sukey, do you hear? — bring 
your husband with you." This was all the reproof 
she ever heard from him. Need it be added, that the 
match turned out better for Susan than the world 
expected ? 

The vices of some men are magnificent. Compare 
the amours of Henry the Eighth and Charles the 
Second. The Stuart had mistresses : the Tudor Jcept 
wives. 



20 TABLE-TALK. 

" We read the ' Paradise Lost ' as a task," says Dr. 
Johnson. Nay, rather as a celestial recreation, of 
which the dullard mind is not at all hours alike recipi- 
ent. " Nobody ever wished it longer ; " nor the moon 
rounder, he might have added. Why, 'tis the perfect- 
ness and completeness of it which makes us imagine 
that not a line could be added to it, or diminished from 
it, with advantage. Would we have a cubit added to 
the stature of the Medicean Venus ? Do we wish her 
taller? 

Amidst the complaints of the wide spread of infidelity 
among us, it is consolatory that a sect has sprung up in 
the heart of the metropolis, and is daily on the increase, 
of teachers of that healing doctrine which Pope upheld, 
and against which Voltaire directed his envenomed wit : 
we mean those practical preachers of optimism, or the 
belief that whatever is is best; the cads of omnibuses, 
who from their little back pulpits, not once in three or 
four hours, as those proclaimers of " God and his 
prophet" in Mussulman countries, but every minute, at 
the entry or exit of a brief passenger, are heard, in an 
almost prophetic tone, to exclaim (Wisdom crying out, 
as it were, in the streets), "All's eight !" 

Advice is not so commonly thrown away as is im- 
agined. We seek it in difficulties. But, in common 
speech, we are apt to confound with it admonition; as 
when a friend reminds one that drink is prejudicial to the 
health, &c. We do not care to be told of that which 
we know better than the good man that admonishes. 
M sent to his friend L , who is no water- 



TABLE-TALK. 21 

drinker, a twopenny tract "Against the Use of Fer- 
mented Liquors." L acknowledged the obligation, 

as far as to twopence. Penotier's advice was the safest, 
after all : — 

" I advised him " — 

But I must tell you. The dear, good-meaning, no- 
thinking creature had been dumfounding a company 
of us with a detail of inextricable difficulties, in which 
the circumstances of an acquaintance of his were in- 
volved. No clew of light offered itself. He grew more 
and more misty as he proceeded. We pitied his friend, 
and thought, — 

" God help the man so rapt in Error's endless maze ! " 

when, suddenly brightening up his placid countenance, 
like one that had found out a riddle, and looked to have 
the solution admired, — 

" At last," said he, "I advised him " — 

Here he paused, and here we were again interminably 
thrown back. By no possible guess could any of us 
aim at the drift of the meaning he was about to be 
delivered of. 

"I advised him," he repeated, "to have some advice 
upon the subject." 

A general approbation followed ; and it was unani- 
mously agreed, that, under all the circumstances of the 
case, no sounder or more judicious counsel could have 
been given. 

A laxity pervades the popular use of words. 

Parson W is not quite so continent as Diana, 

yet prettily dissembleth his frailty. Is Parson W , 



22 TABLE-TALK. 

therefore, a hypocrite ? I think, not. Where the con- 
cealment of a vice is less pernicious than the barefaced 
publication of it would be, no additional delinquency is 

incurred in the secrecy. Parson W is simply an 

immoral clergyman. But if Parson W were to be 

for ever haranguing on the opposite virtue ; choosing 
for his perpetual text, in preference to all other pulpit- 
topics, the remarkable resistance recorded in the 39th 
of Exodus [Genesis?] ; dwelling, moreover, and dilat- 
ing upon it, — then Parson W might be reason- 
ably suspected of hypocrisy. But Parson W 

rarely diverteth into such line of argument, or toucheth 
it briefly. His ordinary topics are fetched from "obedi- 
ence to the powers that are," " submission to the civil 
magistrate in all commands that are not absolutely 
unlawful ; " on which he can delight to expatiate with 
equal fervor and sincerity. 

Again : to despise a person is properly to look down 
upon him with none or the least possible emotion ; but 
when Clementina, who has lately lost her lover, with 
bosom heaving, eyes flashing, and her whole frame in 
agitation, pronounces with a peculiar emphasis that she 
" despises the fellow," depend upon it that he is not quite 
so despicable in her eyes as she would have us imagine. 

One more instance. If we must naturalize that por- 
tentous phrase, a truism, it were well that we limited 
the use of it. Every commonplace or trite observation 
is not a truism. For example : A good name helps a 
man on in the world. This is nothing but a simple 
truth, however hackneyed. It has a distinct subject 
and predicate. But when the thing predicated is in- 
volved in the term of the subject, and so necessarily 






TABLE-TALK. 23 

involved that by no possible conception they can be 
separated, then it becomes a truism ; as to say, "A good 
name is a proof of a man's estimation in the world." 
"We seem to be saying something, when we say nothing. 

I was describing to F some knavish tricks of a 

mutual friend of ours. "If he did so and so," was the 
reply, "he cannot be an honest man." Here was a 
genuine truism, truth upon truth, inference and propo- 
sition identical, or rather a dictionary definition usurp- 
ing the place of an inference. 

We are ashamed at sight of a monkey, — somehow 
as we are shy of poor relations. 

C imagined a Caledonian compartment in Hades, 



where there should be fire without sulphur. 

Absurd images are sometimes irresistible. I will 
mention two, — an elephant in a coach-office gravely 
coming to have his trunk booked ; a mermaid over a 
fish-kettle cooking her own tail. 

It is the praise of Shakspeare, with reference to the 
playwriters his contemporaries, that he has so few 
revolting characters. Yet he has one that is singularly 
mean and disagreeable, — the King in " Hamlet." 
Neither has he characters of insignificance, unless the 
phantom that stalks over the stage as Julius Caesar, in 
the play of that name, may be accounted one. Neither 
has he envious characters, excepting the short part of 
Don John, in " Much Ado about Nothing." Neither 
has he unentertaining characters, if we except Parolles, 



24 TABLE-TALK. 

and the little that there is of the Clown, in "All's 
Well that Ends Well." 

Is it possible that Shakspeare should never have read 
Homer, in Chapman's version at least? If he had read 
it, could he mean to travesty it in the parts of those big 
boobies, Ajax and Achilles? Ulysses, Nestor, and 
Agamemnon are true to their parts in the " Iliad : " 
they are gentlemen at least. Thersites, though unamus- 
ing, is fairly deducible from it. Tro'ilus and Cressida 
are a fine graft upon it. But those two big bulks — 

It would settle the dispute as to whether Shakspeare 
intended Othello for a jealous character, to consider 
how differently we are affected towards him and for 
Leontes in the " Winter's Tale." Leontes is that char- 
acter. Othello's fault was simply credulity. 

" Lear. Who are you ? 
Mine eyes are none o' the best. I'll tell you straight. 
Are you not Kent ? 

Kent. The same ; yom servant Kent. 
Where is your servant Caius? 

Lear. 'Twas a good fellow, I can tell you that; 
He'd strike, and quickly too: he is dead and rotten. 

Kent. No, my good lord : I am the very man — 

Lear. I'll see that straight — 

Kent. That from your first of difference and decay 
Have followed your sad steps. 

Lear. You are welcome hither. 

Albany. He knows not what he says ; and vain is it 
That we present us to him. 

Edgar. Look up, my lord. 

Kent. Vex not his ghost. Oh ! let him pass. He hates him 
That would upon the rack of this rough world 
Stretch him out longer." 

So ends " King Lear," the most stupendous of the 







TABLE-TALK. 25 

Shakspearian dramas ; and Kent, the noblest feature of 
the conceptions of his divine mind. This is the magna- 
nimity of authorship, when a writer, having a topic 
presented to him, fruitful of beauties for common 
minds, waives his privilege, and trusts to the judicious 
few for understanding the reason of his abstinence. 
What a pudder would a common dramatist have raised 
here of a reconciliation-scene, a perfect recognition, 
between the assumed Caius and his master ! — to the 
suffusing of many fair eyes, and the moistening of cam- 
bric handkerchiefs. The old dying king partially catch- 
ing at the truth, and immediately lapsing into oblivi- 
ousness, with the high-minded carelessness of the other 
to have his services appreciated, — as one that — 

" Served not for gain, 
Or followed out of form," — 

are among the most judicious, not to say heart-touching, 
strokes in Shakspeare. 

Allied to this magnanimity it is, where the pith and 
point of an argument, the amplification of which might 
compromise the modesty of the speaker, is delivered 
briefly, and, as it were, parenthetically ; as in those few 
but pregnant words, in which the man in the old "Nut- 
brown Maid " rather intimates than reveals his unsus- 
pected high birth to the woman : — 

" Now understand, to Westmoreland, 
Which is my heritage, 
I will you bring, and with a ring, 
By way of marriage, 
I will you take, and lady make." 

Turn we to the version of it, ten times diluted, of 
dear Mat. Prior, — in his own way unequalled, and a 



26 THE GENTLE GIANTESS. 

poet now-a-days too much neglected. " In me," quoth 
Henry, addressing the astounded Emma, — with a flour- 
ish and an attitude, as we may conceive, — 

" In me behold the potent Edgar's heir, 
Illustrious earl ! him terrible in war, 
Let Loire confess." 

And with a deal of skimble-skamble stuff, as Hotspur 
would term it, more, presents the lady with a full and 
true enumeration of his papa's rent-roll in the fat soil 
by Deva. 

But, of all parentheses (not to quit the topic too sud- 
denly), commend me to that most significant one, at 
the commencement of the old popular ballad of " Fair 
Rosamond : " — 

" When good King Henry ruled this land 
The second of that name," 



Now mark, 

There is great virtue in this besides. 



" (Besides the queen) he dearly loved 
A fair and comely dame." 



THE GENTLE. GIANTESS.* 

The Widow Blacket, of Oxford, is the largest female 
I ever had the pleasure of beholding. There may be 
her parallel upon the earth ; but surely I never saw it. 
I take her to be lineally descended from the maid's aunt 
of Brainford, who caused Master Ford such uneasiness. 
She hath Atlantean shoulders ; and, as she stoopeth in 

* From the " London Magazine," 1822. 




THE GENTLE GIANTESS. 27 

her gait, — with as few offences to answer for in her own 
particular as any of Eve's daughters, — her back seems 
broad enough to bear the blame of all the peccadilloes 
that have been committed since Adam. She girdeth 
her waist — or what she is pleased to esteem as such — 
nearly up to her shoulders ; from beneath which, that 
huge dorsal expanse, in mountainous declivity, emer- 
geth. Respect for her alone preventeth the idle boys, 
who follow her about in shoals, whenever she cometh 
abroad, from getting up, and riding. But her pres- 
ence infallibly commands a reverence. She is indeed, 
as the Americans would express it, something awful. 
Her person is a burthen to herself no less than to the 
ground which bears her. To her mighty bone, she 
hath a pinguitude withal, which makes the depth of 
winter to her the most desirable season. Her distress 
in the warmer solstice is pitiable. During the months 
of July and August, she usually renteth a cool cellar, 
where ices are kept, whereinto she descendeth when 
Sirius rageth. She dates from a hot Thursday, — some 
twenty-five years ago. Her apartment in summer is 
pervious to the four winds. Two doors, in north and 
south direction, and two windows, fronting the rising 
and the setting sun, never closed, from every cardinal 
point, catch the contributory breezes. She loves to 
enjoy what she calls a quadruple draught. That must 
be a shrewd zephyr that can escape her. I owe a 
painful face-ache, which oppresses me at this moment, 
to a cold caught, sitting by her, one day in last July, at 
this receipt of coolness. Her fan, in ordinary, resem- 
bleth a banner spread, which she keepeth continually on 
the alert to detect the least breeze. She possesseth an 



28 THE GENTLE GIANTESS. 

active and gadding mind, totally incommensurate with 
her person. No one delighteth more than herself in 
country exercises and pastimes. I have passed many 
an agreeable holy-day with her in her favorite park at 
Woodstock. She performs her part in these delightful 
ambulatory excursions by the aid of a portable garden 
chair. She setteth out with you at a fair foot-gallop, 
which she keepeth up till you are both well breathed, 
and then she reposeth for a few seconds. Then she is up 
again for a hundred paces or so, and again resteth ; 
her movement, on these sprightly occasions, being 
something between walking and flying. Her great 
weight seemeth to propel her forward, ostrich-fashion. 
In this kind of relieved marching, I have traversed 
with her many scores of acres on those well-wooded 
and well-watered domains. Her delight at Oxford is in 
the public walks and gardens, where, when the weather 
is not too oppressive, she passeth much of her valu- 
able time. There is a bench at Maudlin, or rather situ- 
ated between the frontiers of that and 's College 

(some litigation, latterly, about repairs, has vested the 

property of it finally in — V), where, at the hour 

of noon, she is ordinarily to be found sitting, — so 
she calls it by courtesy, — but, in fact, pressing and 
breaking of it down with her enormous settlement ; as 
both those foundations, who, however, are good-natured 
enough to wink at it, have found, I believe, to their 
cost. Here she taketh the fresh air, principally at 
vacation-times, when the walks are freest from interrup- 
tion of the younger fry of students. Here she passeth 
her idle hours, not idly, but generally accompanied 
with a book, — blessed if she can but intercept some res- 



THE GENTLE GIANTESS. 29 

ident Fellow (as usually there are some of that brood 
left behind at these periods) or stray Master of Arts 
(to most of whom she is better known than their dinner- 
bell), with whom she may confer upon any curious 
topic of literature. I have seen these shy gownsmen, 
who truly set but a very slight value upon female con- 
versation, cast a hawk's eye upon her from the length 
of Maudlin Grove, and warily glide off into into another 
walk, — true monks as they are, and ungently neglect- 
ing the delicacies of her polished converse for their 
own perverse and uncommunicating solitariness ! With- 
in-doors, her principal diversion is music, vocal and 
instrumental ; in both which she is no mean professor. 
Her voice is wonderfully fine ; but, till I got used to it, 
I confess it staggered me. It is, for all the world, like 
that of a piping bulfinch ; while, from her size and 
stature, you would expect notes to drown the deep or- 
gan. The shake, which most fine singers reserve for 
the close or cadence, by some unaccountable flexibility, 
or tremulousness of pipe, she carrieth quite through 
the composition ; so that her time, to a common air or 
ballad, keeps double motion, like the earth, — running 
the primary circuit of the tune, and still revolving upon 
its own axis. The effect, as I said before, when you 
are used to it, is as agreeable as it is altogether new 
and surprising. The spacious apartment of her out- 
ward frame lodgeth a soul in all respects disproportion- 
ate. Of more than mortal make, she evinceth withal a 
trembling sensibility, a yielding infirmity of purpose, 
a quick susceptibility to reproach, and all the train of 
diffident and blushing virtues, which for their habita- 
tion usually seek out a feeble frame, an attenuated and 



30 THE GENTLE GIANTESS. 

meagre constitution. With more than man's bulk, her 
humors and occupations are eminently feminine. She 
sighs, — being six foot high. She languisheth, — be- 
ing two feet wide. She worketh slender sprigs upon 
the delicate muslin, — her fingers being capable of 
moulding a Colossus. She sippeth her wine out of her 
glass daintily, — her capacity being that of a tun of 
Heidelberg. She goeth mincingly with those feet of 
hers, whose solidity need not fear the black ox's press- 
ure. Softest and largest of thy sex, adieu ! By what 
parting attribute may I salute thee, last and best of 
the Titanesses, — Ogress, fed with milk instead of 
blood ; not least, or least handsome, among Oxford's 
stately structures, — Oxford, who, in its deadest time of 
vacation, can never properly be said to be empty, 
having thee to fill it.* 

* Lamb, in the following extract from a letter to Miss Wordsworth, gives 
the original sketch of "The Gentle Giantess:" "Ask anybody you meet 
who is the biggest woman in Cambridge, and I'll hold you a wager they'll 

say Mrs. . She broke down two benches in Trinity Gardens ; one on the 

confines of St. John's, which occasioned a litigation between the societies 
as to repairing it. In warm weather, she retires into an ice-cellar (liter- 
ally), and dates from a hot Thursday some twenty years back. She sits in 
a room with opposite doors and windows, to let in a thorough draught, which 
gives her slenderer friends toothaches. She is to be seen in the market every 
morning at ten, cheapening fowls ; which I observe the Cambridge poul- 
terers are not sufficiently careful to stump." The reader will observe, that, 
in the essay, Elia has changed the locality of the stout woman, and places 
her in Oxford, instead of Cambridge. — Editok. 



THE REYNOLDS GALLERY. 31 



THE REYNOLDS GALLERY.* 

The Reynolds Gallery has, upon the whole, disappoint- 
ed me. Some of the portraits are interesting. They 
are faces of characters whom we (middle-aged gentle- 
men) were born a little too late to remember, but about 
whom we have heard our fathers tell stories till we 
almost fancy to have seen them. There is a charm in the 
portrait of a Rodney or a Keppel, which even a picture 
of Nelson must want for me. I should turn away after 
a slight inspection from the best likeness that could be 
made of Mrs. Anne Clarke ; but Kitty Fisher is a con- 
siderable personage. Then the dresses of some of the 
women so exactly remind us of modes which we can 
just recall ; of the forms under which the venerable re- 
lationship of aunt or mother first presented themselves 
to our young eyes ; the aprons, the coifs, the lappets, the 
hoods. Mercy on us ! what a load of head-ornaments 
seem to have conspired to bury a pretty face in the pic- 
ture of Mrs. Long, yet could not ! Beauty must have 
some " charmed life " to have been able to surmount the 
conspiracy of fashion in those days to destroy it. 

The portraits which least pleased me were those of 
boys, as infant Bacchuses, Jupiters, &c. But the 
artist is not to be blamed for the disguise. No 
doubt, the parents wished to see their children deified 
in their lifetime. It was but putting a thunderbolt 
(instead of a squib) into young master's hands ; and a 

* From the "London Examiner," 1813. 



32 THE REYNOLDS GALLERY. 

whey-faced cliit was transformed into the infant ruler 
of Olympus, — him who was afterward to shake heaven 
and earth with his black brow. Another good boy 
pleased his grandmamma with saying his prayers so well, 
and the blameless dotage of the good old woman ima- 
gined in him an adequate representative of the infancy 
of the awful Prophet Samuel. But the great historical 
compositions, where the artist was at liberty to paint from his 
own idea, — the Beaufort and the Ugolino : why, then, I 
must confess, pleading the liberty of table-talk for my 
presumption, that they have not left any very elevating 
impressions on my mind. Pardon a ludicrous compar- 
ison. I know, madam, you admire them both; but 
placed opposite to each other as they are at the gallery, 
as if to set the one work in competition with the other, 
they did remind me of the famous contention for the 
prize of deformity, mentioned in the 173d number of 
the " Spectator." The one stares, and the other grins ; 
but is there common dignity in their countenances ? 
Does any thing of the history of their life gone by peep 
through the ruins of the mind in the face, like the 
unconquerable grandeur that surmounts the distortions 
of the Laocoon ? The figures which stand by the bed 
of Beaufort are indeed^ happy representations of the 
plain unmannered old nobility of the English histori- 
cal plays of Shakspeare ; but, for any thing else, give 
me leave to recommend those macaroons. 

After leaving the Reynolds Gallery (where, upon the 
whole, I received a good deal of pleasure), and feeling 
that I had quite had my fill of paintings, I stumbled 
upon a picture in Piccadilly (No. 22, I think), which 
purports to be a portrait of Francis the First by Leo- 



THE REYNOLDS GALLERY. 33 

nardo da Vinci. Heavens, what a difference ! It is but a 
portrait, as most of those I had been seeing ; but, placed 
by them, it would kill them, swallow them up as Moses' 
rod the other rods. Where did these old painters get 
their models ? I see no such figures, not in my dreams, 
as this Francis, in the character, or rather with the 
attributes, of John the Baptist. A more than martial 
majesty in the brow and upon the eyelid ; an arm 
muscular, beautifully formed ; the long, graceful, massy 
fingers compressing, yet so as not to hurt, a lamb more 
lovely, more sweetly shrinking, than we can conceive 
that milk-white one which followed Una ; the picture 
altogether looking as if it were eternal, — combining 
the truth of flesh with a promise of permanence like 
marble. 

Leonardo, from the one or two specimens we have of 
him in England, must have been a stupendous genius. 
I scarce can think he has had his full fame, — he who 
could paint that wonderful personification of the Logos, 
or third person of the Trinity, grasping a globe, late in 
the possession of Mr. Troward of Pall Mall, where the 
hand was, by the boldest license, twice as big as the 
truth of drawing warranted ; yet the effect, to every 
one that saw it, by some magic of genius was con- 
fessed to be not monstrous, but miraculous and silencing. 
It could not be gainsaid. 



34 GUY FAUX. 



GUY FAUX* 

A veky ingenious and subtle writer, f whom there is 
good reason for suspecting to be an ex- Jesuit, not 
unknown at Douay some five and twenty years since 

(he will not obtrude himself at M th again in a 

hurry) , about a twelvemonth back set himself to prove 
the character of the Powder-Plot conspirators to have 
been that of heroic self-devotedness and true Christian 
martyrdom. Under the mask of Protestant candor, he 
actually gained admission for his treatise into a London 
weekly paper J not particularly distinguished for its 
zeal towards either religion. But, admitting Catholic 
principles, his arguments are shrewd and incontroverti- 
ble. He says, — 

" Guy Faux was a fanatic ; but he was no hypocrite. 
He ranks among good haters. He was cruel, bloody- 
minded, reckless of all considerations but those of an 
infuriated and bigoted faith ; but he was a true son of 
the Catholic Church, a martyr, and a confessor, for all 
that. He who can prevail upon himself to devote his 
life for a cause, however we may condemn his opinions 
or abhor his actions, vouches at least for the honesty of 
his principles and the disinterestedness of his motives. 
He may be guilty of the worst practices ; but he is capa- 
ble of the greatest. He is no longer a slave, but free. 

* From the " London Magazine," 1823. 

t William Hazlitt. 

% The " London Examiner," then edited by Leigh Hunt. 



GUY FAUX. 35 

The contempt of death is the beginning of virtue. The 
hero of the Gunpowder Plot was, if you will, a fool, a 
madman, an assassin ; call him what names you please : 
still he was neither knave nor coward. He did not 
propose to blow up the parliament, and come off, scot- 
free, himself: he showed that he valued his own life no 
more than theirs in such a cause, where the integrity 
of the Catholic faith and the salvation of perhaps mil- 
lions of souls was at stake. He did not call it a mur- 
der, but a sacrifice, which he was about to achieve : he 
was armed with the Holy Spirit and with fire ; he was 
the Church's chosen servant and her blessed martyr. 
He comforted himself as f the best of cut -throats.' 
How many wretches are there that would have under- 
taken to do what he intended, for a sum of money, if 
they could have got off with impunity ! How few are 
there who would have put themselves in Guy Faux's 
situation to save the universe ! Yet, in the latter case, 
we affect to be thrown into greater consternation than 
at the most unredeemed acts of villany ; as if the abso- 
lute disinterestedness of the motive doubled the horror 
of the deed ! The cowardice and selfishness of mankind 
are in fact shocked at the consequences to themselves 
(if such examples are held up for imitation) ; and they 
make a fearful outcry against the violation of every 
principle of morality, lest they, too, should be called on 
for any such tremendous sacrifices; lest they, in their 
turn, should have to go on the forlorn hope of extra- 
official duty. Charity begins at home is a maxim that 
prevails as well in the courts of conscience as in those 
of prudence. We would be thought to shudder at the 
consequences of crime to others, while we tremble for 



GUY FAUX. 



them to ourselves. We talk of the dark and cowardly- 
assassin ; and this is well, when an individual shrinks 
from the face of an enemy, and purchases his own safety 
by striking a blow in the dark : but how the charge 
of cowardly can be applied to the public assassin, who, 
in the very act of destroying another, lays down his 
life as the pledge and forfeit of his sincerity and 
boldness, I am at a loss to devise. There may be bar- 
barous prejudice, rooted hatred, unprincipled treachery, 
in such an act ; but he who resolves to take all the 
danger and odium upon himself can no more be brand- 
ed with cowardice, than Regulus devoting himself for 
his country, or Codrus leaping into the fiery gulf. A 
wily Father Inquisitor, coolly and with plenary autho- 
rity condemning hundreds of helpless, unoffending 
victims to the flames, or to the horrors of a living 
tomb, while he himself would not suffer a hair of his 
head to be hurt, is, to me, a character without any quali- 
fying trait in it. Again : the Spanish conqueror and 
hero, the favorite of his monarch, who enticed thirty 
thousand poor Mexicans into a large open building 
under promise of strict faith -and cordial good- will, and 
then set fire to it, making sport of the cries and ago- 
nies of these deluded creatures, is an instance of uniting 
the most hardened cruelty with the most heartless self- 
ishness. His plea was, keeping no faith with heretics ; 
this was Guy Faux's too : but I am sure at least that 
the latter kept faith with himself; he was in earnest in 
his professions. His was not gay, wanton, unfeeling 
depravity ; he did not murder in sport : it was serious 
work that he had taken in hand. To see this arch-bigot, 
this heart-whole traitor, this pale miner in the infernal 



GUY FAUX. 37 

regions, skulking in his retreat with his cloak and dark 
lantern, moving cautiously about among his barrels of 
gunpowder loaded with death, but not yet ripe for de- 
struction, regardless of the lives of others, and more than 
indifferent to his own, presents a picture of the strange 
infatuation of the human understanding, but not of the 
depravity of the human will, without an equal. There 
were thousands of pious Papists privy to and ready 
to applaud the deed when done : there was no one but 
our old fifth-of-November friend, who still flutters in 
rags and straw on the occasion, that had the courage 
to attempt it. In him stern duty and unshaken faith 
prevailed over natural frailty."* 

It is impossible, upon Catholic principles, not to 
admit the force of this reasoning : we can only not help 
smiling (with the writer) at the simplicity of the 
gulled editor, swallowing the dregs of Loyola for 
the very quintessence of sublimated reason in England 
at the commencement of the nineteenth century. We 
will just, as a contrast, show what we Protestants 
(who are a party concerned) thought upon the same 
subject at a period rather nearer to the heroic project 
in question. 

The Gunpowder Treason was the subject which called 

* In Hazlitt's delightful report of the conversation at one of Charles 
Lamb's Wednesday-evening parties (it is to be regretted that he did not report 
the conversation at all of these assemblages of wits, humorists, and good 
fellows), Elia thus speaks in defence of the hero of the Gunpowder Plot: 
" I cannot but think that Guy Faux, that poor fluttering annual scare- 
crow of straw and rags, is an ill-used gentleman. I would give something 
to see him sitting pale and emaciated, surrounded by his matches and his 
barrels of gunpowder, and expecting the moment that was to transport him 
to Paradise for his heroic self-devotion. But, if I say any more, there is that 
fellow Godwin will make something out of it." — Editor. 



38 GUY FAUX. 

forth the earliest specimen which is left us of the pulpit 
eloquence of Jeremy Taylor. When he preached the 
sermon on that anniversary, which is printed at the end 
of the folio edition of his Sermons, he was a young 
man, just commencing his ministry under the auspices 
of Archbishop Laud. From the learning and maturest 
oratory which it manifests, one should rather have 
conjectured it to have proceeded from the same person 
after he was ripened by time into a Bishop and Father 
of the Church. "And, really, these Romano-barbari 
could never pretend to any precedent for an act so bar- 
barous as theirs. Adramelech, indeed, killed a king ; 
but he spared the people. Haman would have killed 
the people, but spared the king ; but that both king 
and people, princes and judges, branch and rush and 
root, should die at once (as if Caligula's wish were 
actuated, and all England upon one head) , was never 
known till now, that all the malice of the world met in 
this as in a centre. The Sicilian even-song, the matins 
of St. Bartholomew, known for the pitiless and damned 
massacres, were but kcittvov cKiag 6vap, the dream of the 
shadow of smoke, if compared with this great fire. In 
tarn occupato sceculo fabulas vulgares nequitia non invenit. 
This was a busy age. Herostratus must have invented 
a more sublimed malice than the burning of one temple, 
or not have been so much as spoke of since the discov- 
ery of the powder treason. But I must make more 
haste ; I shall not else climb the sublimity of this im- 
piety. Nero was sometimes the popular e odium, was 
popularly hated, and deserved it too : for he slew his 
master, and his wife, and all his family, once or twice 
over ; opened his mother's womb ; fired the city, 



GUY FAUX. 39 

laughed at it, slandered the Christians for it : but yet 
all these were but principia malorum, the very first rudi- 
ments of evil. Add, then, to these, Herod's master- 
piece at Ramah, as it was deciphered by the tears and 
sad threnes of the matrons in a universal mourning 
for the loss of their pretty infants ; yet this of Herod 
will prove but an infant wickedness, and that of Nero 
the evil but of one city. I would willingly have found 
out an example, but see I cannot. Should I put into 
the scale the extract of all the old tyrants famous in 
antique stories, — 

1 Bistonii stabulum regis, Busiridis aras, 
Antipliatse mensas, et Taurica regna Thoantis ; ' — 

should I take for true story the highest cruelty as it was 
fancied by the most hieroglyphical Egyptian, — this alone 
would weigh them down, as if the Alps were put in 
scale against the dust of a balance. For, had this ac- 
cursed treason prospered, we should have had the whole 
kingdom mourn for the inestimable loss of its chiefest 
glory, its life, its present joy, and all its very hopes for 
the future. For such was their destined malice, that 
they would not only have inflicted so cruel a blow, but 
have made it incurable, by cutting off our supplies of 
joy, the whole succession of the Line Royal. Not 
only the vine itself, but all the gemmula, and the tender 
olive branches, should either have been bent to their 
intentions, and made to grow crooked, or else been 
broken. 

"And now, after such a sublimity of malice, I will 
not instance in the sacrilegious ruin of the neighboring 
temples, which needs must have perished in the flame ; 
nor in the disturbing the ashes of our entombed kings, 



40 GUY FAUX. 

devouring their dead ruins like sepulchral dogs : these 
are but minutes in respect of the ruin prepared for the 
living temples : — 

' Stragem sed istam non tulit 

Christus cadentum Principum 

Impune, ne forsan sui 

Patris periret fabrica. 
Ergo quae poterit lingua retexere 
Laudes, Christe, tuas, qui domitum struis 
Infidum populum cum Duce perfido ! ' " 

In such strains of eloquent indignation did Jeremy 
Taylor's young oratory inveigh against that stupendous 
attempt which he truly says had no parallel in ancient 
or modern times. A century and a half of European 
crimes has elapsed since he made the assertion, and his 
position remains in its strength. He wrote near the 
time in which the nefarious project had like to have been 
completed. Men's minds still were shuddering from 
the recentness of the escape. It must have been within 
his memory, or have been sounded in his ears so young 
by his parents, that he would seem, in his maturer 
years, to have remembered it. No wonder, then, that 
he describes it in words that burn. But to us, to whom 
the tradition has come slowly down, and has had time 
to cool, the story of Guido Yaux sounds rather like a 
tale, a fable, and an invention, than true history. It 
supposes such gigantic audacity of daring, combined 
with such more than infantile stupidity in the motive, — 
such a combination of the fiend and the monkey, — that 
credulity is almost swallowed up in contemplating the 
singularity of the attempt. It has accordingly, in some 
degree, shared the fate of fiction. It is familiarized to 
us in a kind of serio-ludicrous way, like the story of 



GUY FAUX. 41 

Guy of Warwick, or Valentine and Orson. The way 
which we take to perpetuate the memory of this deliver- 
ance is well adapted to keep up this fabular notion. 
Boys go about the streets annually with a beggarly 
scare-crow dressed up, which is to be burnt indeed, at 
night, with holy zeal ; but, meantime, they beg a penny 
for poor Guy : this periodical petition, which we have 
heard from our infancy, combined with the dress and 
appearance of the e&igy, so well calculated to move 
compassion, has the effect of quite removing from 
our fancy the horrid circumstances of the story which is 
thus commemorated ; and in poor Guy vainly should 
we try to recognize any of the features of that tremen- 
dous madman in iniquity, Guido Yaux, with his horrid 
crew of accomplices, that sought to emulate earthquakes 
and bursting volcanoes in their more than mortal 
mischief. 

Indeed, the whole ceremony of burning Guy Faux, 
or the Pope, as he is indifferently called, is a sort of Trea- 
son Travcstie, and admirably adapted to lower our feel- 
ings upon this memorable subject. The printers of the 
little duodecimo Prayer Book, printed by T. Baskett,* 
in 1749, which has the effigy of his sacred majesty 
George II. piously prefixed, have illustrated the ser- 
vice (a very fine one in itself) , which is appointed for 
the anniversary of this day, with a print, which it is 
not very easy to describe ; but the contents appear to 

* The same, I presume, upon whom the clergyman in the song of the 
"Vicar and Moses," not without judgment, passes this memorable cen- 
sure : — 

" Here, Moses the king : 
'Tis a scandalous thing 
That this Baskett should print for the Crown." 



42 GUY FAUX. 

be these : The scene is a room, I conjecture, in the 
king's palace. Two persons — one of whom I take to 
be James himself, from his wearing his hat, while the 
other stands bare-headed — are intently surveying a 
sort of speculum, or magic mirror, which stands upon 
a pedestal in the midst of the room, in which a little 
figure of Guy Faux with his dark lantern, approaching 
the door of the Parliament House, is made discernible 
by the light proceeding from a great eye which shines 
in from the topmost corner of the apartment, by which 
eye the pious artist no doubt meant to designate Provi- 
dence. On the other side of the mirror is a figure 
doing something, which puzzled me when a child, and 
continues to puzzle me now. The best I can make of 
it is, that it is a conspirator busy laying the train ; 
but, then, why is he represented in the king's chamber? 
Conjecture upon so fantastical a design is vain ; and I 
only notice the print as being one of the earliest graphic 
representations which woke my childhood into wonder, 
and doubtless combined, with the mummery before men- 
tioned, to take off the edge of that horror which the 
naked historical mention of Guido's conspiracy could 
not have failed of exciting. 

Now that so many years are past since that abomi- 
nable machination was happily frustrated, it will not, I 
hope, be considered a profane sporting with the subject, 
if we take no very serious survey of the consequences 
that would have flowed from this plot if it had had a 
successful issue. The first thing that strikes us, in a self- 
ish point of view, is the material change which it must 
have produced in the course of the nobility. All the 
ancient peerage being extinguished, as it was intended, 



J < 



GUY FAUX. 43 

at one blow, the Red-Booh must have been closed for 
ever, or a new race of peers must have been created to 
supply the deficiency. As the first part of this dilemma 
is a deal too shocking to think of, what a fund of 
mouth-watering reflections does this give rise to in the 
breast of us plebeians of A.D. 1823 ! Why, you or I, 

reader, might have been Duke of , or Earl of . 

I particularize no titles, to avoid the least suspicion 
of intention to usurp the dignities of the two noblemen 
whom I have in my eye ; but a feeling more digni- 
fied than envy sometimes excites a sigh, when I think 
how the posterity of Guido's Legend of Honor (among 
whom you or I might have been) might have rolled 
down, " dulcified," as Burke expresses it, " by an expo- 
sure to the influence of heaven in a long flow of genera- 
tions, from the hard, acidulous, metallic tincture of the 
spring." * What new orders of merit think you this 
English Napoleon would have chosen ? Knights of the 
Barrel, or Lords of the Tub, Grand Almoners of 
the Cellar, or Ministers of Explosion. We should 
have given the train couchant, and the fire rampant, in 
our arms ; we should have quartered the dozen white 
matches in our coats : the Shallows would have been 
nothing to us. 

Turning away from these mortifying reflections, let 
us contemplate its effects upon the other house; for 
they were all to have gone together, — king, lords, 
commons. 

To assist our imagination, let us take leave to sup- 
pose (and we do it in the harmless wantonness of fancy) 
— to suppose that the tremendous explosion had taken 

* Letter to a Noble Lord. 



44 GUY FAUX. 

place in our days. We better know what a House of 
Commons is in our days, and can better estimate our 
loss. Let us imagine, then, to ourselves, the united 
'members sitting in full conclave above ; Faux just 
ready with his train and matches below, — in his 
hand a " reed tipt with fire." He applies the fatal 
engine. 

To assist our notions still further, let us suppose 
some lucky dog of a reporter, who had escaped by 
miracle upon some plank of St. Stephen's benches, and 
came plump upon the roof of the adjacent Abbey ; from 
whence descending, at some neighboring coffee-house, 
first wiping his clothes and calling for a glass of lemon- 
ade, he sits down and reports what he had heard and 
seen (quorum pars magna fuii) , for the " Morning Post " 
or the " Courier." We can scarcely imagine him de- 
scribing the event in any other words but some such 
as these : — 

" A motion was put and carried, that this house do 
adjourn ; that the speaker do quit the chair. The house 
rose amid clamors for order." 

In some such way the event might most technically 
have been conveyed to the public. But a poetical mind, 
not content with this dry method of narration, cannot 
help pursuing the effects of this tremendous blowing 
up, this adjournment in the air, sine die. It seems the 
benches mount, — the chair first, and then the benches ; 
and first the treasury bench, hurried up in this nitrous 
explosion, — the members, as it were, pairing off; Whigs 
and Tories taking their friendly apotheosis together (as 
they did their sandwiches below in Bellamy's room) . 
Fancy, in her flight, keeps pace with the aspiring legis- 



GUY FAUX. 45 

lators : she sees the awful seat of order mounting, till it 
becomes finally fixed, a constellation, next to Cassiopeia's 
chair, — the wig of him that sat in it taking its place 
near Berenice's curls. St. Peter, at heaven's wicket, 
— no, not St. Peter, — St. Stephen, with open arms, 
receives his own. 

While Fancy beholds these celestial appropriations, 
Reason, no less pleased, discerns the mighty benefit 
which so complete a renovation must produce below. 
Let the most determined foe to corruption, the most 
thorough-paced redresser of abuses, try to conceive a 
more absolute purification of the house than this was 
calculated to produce. Why, pride's purge was no- 
thing to it. The whole borough-mongering system 
would have been got rid of, fairly exploded;' with 
it the senseless distinctions of party must have disap- 
peared, faction must have vanished, corruption have 
expired in air. From Hundred, Tything, and Wapen- 
take, some new Alfred would have convened, in all 
its purity, the primitive Witenagemote, — fixed upon 
a basis of property or population permanent as the 
poles. 

From this dream of universal restitution, Reason and 
Fancy with difficulty awake to view the real state of 
things. But, blessed be Heaven ! St. Stephen's walls 
are yet standing, all her seats firmly secured ; nay, 
some have doubted (since the Septennial Act) whether 
gunpowder itself, or any thing short of a committee 
above stairs, would be able to shake any one member 
from his seat. That great and final improvement to 
the Abbey, which is all that seems wanting, — the 
removing Westminster Hall and its appendages, and let- 



46 A VISION OF HORNS. 

ting in the view of the Thames, — must not be expected 
in our days. Dismissing, therefore, all such specula- 
tions as mere tales of a tub, it is the duty of every 
honest Englishman to endeavor, by means less whole- 
sale than Guido's, to ameliorate, without extinguishing, 
parliaments ; to hold the lantern to the dark places of 
corruption ; to apply the match to the rotten parts of the 
system only ; and to wrap himself up, not in the muf- 
fling mantle of conspiracy, but in the warm, honest 
cloak of integrity and patriotic intention. 



A VISION OF HORNS.* 

My thoughts had been engaged last evening in solv- 
ing the problem, why in all times and places the horn 
has been agreed upon as the symbol, or honorable 
badge, of married men. Moses' horn, the horn of 
Amnion, of Amalthea, and a cornucopia of legends 
besides, came to my recollection, but afforded no satis- 

* From the "London Magazine," 1825. 

In a letter to Miss Hutchinson, Lamb thus speaks of this article: "The 
' Horns ' is in a poor taste, resembling the most labored papers in the ' Spec- 
tator.' I had signed it ' Jack Horner: ' but Taylor and Hessey said it would 
be thought an offensive article, unless I put my known signature to it ; and 
wrung from me my slow consent." It seems that the " Vision " (" the foolish 
Vision," Lamb calls it) displeased Bernard Barton's daughter; but Elia 
hoped she would receive, in atonement for the " Horns " (as no doubt the 
"quiet Quakeress" gladly did), his beautiful story, " Barbara S." But 
despite the disparaging words of its writer, and the wounded sensibility of 
Miss Lucy Barton, I venture to say that " The Vision of Horns " is a 
pleasant and entertaining paper. — Editor. 



A VISION OF HORNS. 47 

factory solution, or rather involved the question in 
deeper obscurity. Tired with the fruitless chase of 
inexphcant analogies, I fell asleep, and dreamed in this 
fashion : — 

Methought certain scales or films fell from my eyes, 
which had hitherto hindered these little tokens from 
being visible. I was somewhere in the Cornhill (as it 
might be termed) of some Utopia. Busy citizens 
jostled each other, as they may do in our streets, with 
care (the care of making a penny) written upon their 
foreheads ; and something else, which is rather imagined 
than distinctly imaged, upon the brows of my own 
friends and fellow-townsmen. 

In my first surprise, I supposed myself gotten into 
some forest, — Arden, to be sure, or Sherwood; but 
the dresses and deportment, all civic, forbade me to 
continue in that delusion. Then a scriptural thought 
crossed me (especially as there were nearly as many 
Jews as Christians among them) , whether it might not 
be the children of Israel going up to besiege Jericho. I 
was undeceived of both errors by the sight of many faces 
which were familiar to me. I found myself strangely 
(as it will happen in dreams) at one and the same time 
in an unknown country with known companions. I 
met old friends, not with new faces, but with their old 
faces oddly adorned in front, with each man a certain 
corneous excresence. Dick Mitis, the little cheesemon- 
ger in St. 's Passage, was the first that saluted me, 

with his hat off (you know Dick's way to a customer); 
and, I not being aware of him, he thrust a strange 
beam into my left eye, which pained and grieved me 
exceedingly ; but, instead of apology, he only grinned 



48 A VISION OF HORNS. 

and fleered in my face, as much as to say, " It is the 
custom of the country," and passed on. 

I had scarce time to send a civil message to his lady, 
whom I have always admired as a pattern of a wife, 
and do indeed take Dick and her to be a model of con- 
jugal agreement and harmony, when I felt an ugly 
smart in my neck, as if something had gored it behind ; 
and, turning round, it was my old friend and neighbor, 
Dulcet, the confectioner, who, meaning to be pleasant, 
had thrust his protuberance right into my nape, and 
seemed proud of his power of offending. 

Now I was assailed right and left, till in my own 
defence I was obliged to walk sideling and wary, and 
look about me, as you guard your eyes in London 
streets ; for the horns thickened, and came at me like 
the ends of umbrellas poking in one's face. 

I soon found that these towns-folk were the civilest, 
best-mannered people in the world ; and that, if they had 
offended at all, it was entirely owing to their blindness. 
They do not know what dangerous weapons they pro- 
trude in front, and will stick their best friends in the 
eye with provoking complacency. Yet the best of it 
is, they can see the beams on their neighbors' foreheads, 
if they are as small as motes ; but their own beams they 
can in no wise discern. 

There was little Mitis, that I told you I just encoun- 
tered. He has simply (I speak of him at home in his 
own shop) the smoothest forehead in his own conceit. 
He will stand you a quarter of an hour together, con- 
templating the serenity of it in the glass, before he 
begins to shave himself in a morning ; yet you saw 
what a desperate gash he gave me. 



A VISION OF HORNS. 49 

Desiring to be better informed of the ways of this 
extraordinary people, I applied myself to a fellow of 
some assurance, who (it appeared) acted as a sort of 
interpreter to strangers : he was dressed in a military 

uniform, and strongly resembled Col. , of the 

Guards. And " Pray, sir," said I, " have all the inhab- 
itants of your city these troublesome excrescences ? I 
beg pardon : I see you have none. You perhaps are 
single." — "Truly, sir," he replied with a smile, "for 
the most part we have, but not all alike. There are 
some, like Dick, that sport but one tumescence. Their 
ladies have been tolerably faithful, have confined 
themselves to a single aberration or so : these we call 
Unicorns. Dick, you must know, is my Unicorn. [He 
spoke this with an air of invincible assurance.] Then 
we have Bicorns, Tricorns, and so on up to Millecorns. 
[Here methought I crossed and blessed myself in my 
dream.] Some again we have, — there goes one: 
you see how happy the rogue looks, — how he walks 
smiling, and perking up his face, as if he thought him- 
self the only man. He is not married yet ; but on 
Monday next he leads to the altar the accomplished 
widow Dacres, relict of our late sheriff." 

" I see, sir," said I, " and observe that he is happily 
free from the national goitre (let me call it) which 
distinguishes most of your countrymen." 

" Look a little more narrowly," said my conductor. 

I put on my spectacles ; and, observing the man a 

little more diligently, above his forehead I could mark 

a thousand little twinkling shadows dancing the horn- 
et o 

pipe ; little hornlets, and rudiments of horn, of a soft 

and pappy consistence (for I handled some of them) , 

4 



50 A VISION OF HORNS. 

but which, like coral out of water, my guide informed 
me, would infallibly stiffen and grow rigid within a 
week or two from the expiration of his bachelorhood. 

Then I saw some horns strangely growing out be- 
hind ; and my interpreter explained these to be married 
men, whose wives had conducted themselves with infi- 
nite propriety since the period of their marriage, but 
were thought to have antedated their good men's titles, 
by certain liberties they had indulged themselves in, 
prior to the ceremony. This kind of gentry wore their 
horns backwards, as has been said, in the fashion of 
the old pig-tails ; and, as there was nothing obtrusive 
or ostentatious in them, nobody took any notice of it. 

Some had pretty little budding antlers, like the first 
essays of a young fawn. These, he told me, had wives, 
whose affairs were in a hopeful way, but not quite 
brought to a conclusion. 

Others had nothing to show : only by certain red 
angry marks and swellings in their foreheads, which 
itched the more they kept rubbing and chafing them, it 
was to be hoped that something was brewing. 

I took notice that every one jeered at the rest, only 
none took notice of the sea-captains ; yet these were as 
well provided with their tokens as the best among them. 
This kind of people, it seems, taking their wives upon 
so contingent tenures, their lot was considered as 
nothing but natural : so they wore their marks with- 
out impeachment, as they might carry their cockades ; 
and nobody respected them a whit the less for it. 

I observed, that the more sprouts grew out of a 
man's head, the less weight they seemed to carry 
with them ; whereas a single token would now and 



A VISION OF HORNS. 51 

then appear to give the wearer some uneasiness. This 
shows that use is a great thing. 

Some had their adornings gilt, which needs no ex- 
planation ; while others, like musicians, went sounding 
theirs before them, — a sort of music which I thought 
might very well have been spared. 

It was pleasant to see some of the citizens encounter 
between themselves ; how they smiled in their sleeves 
at the shock they received from their neighbor, and none 
seemed conscious of the shock which their neighbor ex- 
perienced in return. 

Some had great corneous stumps, seemingly torn off 
and bleeding. These, the interpreter warned me, were 
husbands who had retaliated upon their wives, and the 
badge was in equity divided between them. 

While I stood discerning these things, a slight tweak 
on my cheek unawares, which brought tears into my 
eyes, introduced to me my friend Placid, between whose 
lady and a certain male cousin some idle flirtations I 
remember to have heard talked of; but that was all. 
He saw he had somehow hurt me, and asked my par- 
don with that round, unconscious face of his ; and 
looked so tristful and contrite for his no-offence, that 
I was ashamed for the man's penitence. Yet I protest 
it was but a scratch. It was the least little hornet of a 
horn that could be framed. " Shame on the man," I 
secretly exclaimed, " who could thrust so much as the 
value of a hair into a brow so unsuspecting and inoffen- 
sive ! What, then, must they have to answer for, who 
plant great, monstrous, timber-like, projecting antlers 
upon the heads of those whom they call their friends, 
when a puncture of this atomical tenuity made my eyes 



52 A VISION OF HORNS. 

to water at this rate ! All the pincers at Surgeons' 
Hall cannot pull out for Placid that little hair." 

I was curious to know what became of these frontal 
excrescences when the husbands died; and my guide 
informed me that the chemists in their country made a 
considerable profit by them, extracting from them cer- 
tain subtile essences : and then I remembered that 
nothing was so efficacious in my own, for restoring 
swooning matrons, and wives troubled with the vapors, 
as a strong sniff or two at the composition appropriately 
called hartshorn, — far beyond sal volatile. 

Then also I began to understand why a man, who is 
the jest of the company, is said to be the butt, — as 
much as to say, such a one butteth with the horn. 

I inquired if by no operation these wens were ever 
extracted ; and was told that there was indeed an order 
of dentists, whom they call canonists in their language, 
who undertook to restore the forehead to its pristine 
smoothness ; but that ordinarily it was not done without 
much cost and trouble ; and, when they succeeded in 
plucking out the offending part, it left a painful void, 
which could not be filled up ; and that many patients 
who had submitted to the excision were eager to marry 
again, to supply with a good second antler the baldness 
and deformed gap left by the extraction of the former, 
as men losing their natural hair substitute for it a less 
becoming periwig. 

Some horns I observed beautifully taper, smooth, 
and (as it were) flowering. These I understand were 
the portions brought by handsome women to their 
spouses ; and I pitied the rough, homely, unsightly 
deformities on the brows of others, who had been de- 



A VISION OF HORNS. 53 

ceived by plain and ordinary partners. Yet the latter 
I observed to be by far the most common ; the solu- 
tion of which I leave to the natural philosopher. 

One tribe of married men I particularly admired at, 
who, instead of horns, wore ingrafted on their fore- 
head a sort of horn-book. " This," quoth my guide, 
w is the greatest mystery in our country, and well worth 
an explanation. You must know that all infidelity is 
not of the senses. We have as well intellectual as 
material wittols. These, whom you see decorated with 
the order of the book, are triflers, who encourage about 
their wives' presence the society of your men of genius, 
(their good friends, as they call them), — literary dis- 
putants, who ten to one out-talk the poor husband, and 
commit upon the understanding of the woman a violence 
and estrangement in the end, little less painful than the 
coarser sort of alienation. Whip me these knaves, — 
[my conductor here expressed himself with a becoming 
warmth], — whip me them, I say, who, with no excuse 
from the passions, in cold blood seduce the minds, rather 
than the persons, of their friends' wives ; who, for the 
tickling pleasure of hearing themselves prate, dehon- 
estate the intellects of married women, dishonoring the 
husband in what should be his most sensible part. If 
I must be — [here he used a plain word] let it be by 
some honest sinner like myself, and not by one of these 
gad-flies, these debauchers of the understanding, these 
flattery-buzzers." He was going on in this manner, 
and I was getting insensibly pleased with my friend's 
manner (I had been a little shy of him at first) , when 
the dream suddenly left me, vanishing, as Virgil speaks, 
through the gate of Horn. 



54 JOHN KEMBLE, 



JOHN KEMBLE, AND GODWIN'S TRAGEDY OF 
"ANTONIO."* 

The story of his swallowing opium-pills to keep him 
lively upon the first night of a certain tragedy, we may 
presume to be a piece of retaliatory pleasantry on the part 
of the suffering author. But, indeed, John had the art 
of diffusing a complacent equable dulness (which you 
knew not where to quarrel with) over a piece which he 
did not like, beyond any of his contemporaries. John 
Kemble had made up his mind early, that all the good 
tragedies which could be written had been written ; and 
he resented any new attempt. His shelves were full. 
The old standards were scope enough for his ambition. 
He ranged in them absolute ; and " fair in Otway, full 
in Shakspeare shone." He succeeded to the old lawful 
thrones, and did not care to adventure bottomry with a 
Sir Edward Mortimer, or any casual speculator that 
offered. 

I remember, too acutely for my peace, the deadly 
extinguisher which he put upon my friend G.'s "An- 
tonio." G., satiate with visions of political justice 
(possibly not to be realized in our time) , or willing to 
let the sceptical worldlings see that his anticipations of 

* From the "London Magazine," 1822. 

To Elia's essay on " The Artificial Comedy of the Last Century," as 
originally published in the " London Magazine," this circumstantial account 
of the cold and stately manner in which John Kemble performed the part 
of Antonio, in Godwin's unfortunate play of that name, was the conclusion. 
In reprinting the article, Lamb omitted this part of it. — Editor. 



AND GODWIN'S TRAGEDY OF "ANTONIO." 55 

the future did not preclude a warm sympathy for men 
as they are and have been, wrote a tragedy. He chose 
a story, affecting, romantic, Spanish ; the plot simple, 
without being naked ; the incidents uncommon, with- 
out being overstrained. Antonio, who gives the name 
to the piece, is a sensitive young Castilian, who, in a 
fit of his country honor, immolates his sister — 

But I must not anticipate the catastrophe. The play, 
reader, is extant in choice English ; and you will employ 
a spare half-crown not injudiciously in the quest of it. 

The conception was bold ; and the denouement, the 
time and place in which the hero of it existed, consid- 
ered, not much out of keeping : yet it must be con- 
fessed that it required a delicacy of handling, both from 
the author and the performer, so as not much to shock 
the prejudices of a modern English audience. G., in 
my opinion, had done his part. John, who was in famil- 
iar habits with the philosopher, had undertaken to play 
Antonio. Great expectations were formed. A philos- 
opher's first play was a new era. The night arrived. 
I was favored with a seat in an advantageous box, be- 
tween the author and his friend M. G. sat cheerful 
and confident. In his friend M.'s looks, who had 
perused the manuscript, I read some terror. Antonio, 
in the person of John Philip Kemble, at length ap- 
peared, starched out in a ruff which no one could 
dispute, and in most irreproachable mustachios. John 
always dressed most provokingly correct on these occa- 
sions. The first act swept by, solemn and silent. It 
went off, as G. assured M. , exactly as the opening act 
of a piece — the protasis — should do. The cue of the 
spectators was to be mute. The characters were but in 



56 JOHN KEMBLE, 

their introduction. The passions and the incidents 
would be developed hereafter. Applause hitherto would 
be impertinent. Silent attention was the effect all- 
desirable. Poor M. acquiesced ; but in his honest, 
friendly face I could discern a working which told how 
much more acceptable the plaudit of a single hand 
(however misplaced) would have been than all this 
reasoning. The second act (as in duty bound) rose a 
little in interest ; but still John kept his forces under, — 
in policy, as G. would have it, — and the audience were 
most complacently attentive. The protasis, in fact, was 
scarcely unfolded. The interest would warm in the 
next act, against which a special incident was provided. 
M. wiped his cheek, flushed with a friendly perspira- 
tion, — 'tis M.'s way of showing his zeal, — "from 
every pore of him a perfume falls." I honor it above 
Alexander's. He had once or twice during this act 
joined his palms in a feeble endeavor to elicit a sound ; 
they emitted a solitary noise without an echo : there 
was no deep to answer to his deep. G. repeatedly 
begged him to be quiet. The third act at length 
brought on the scene which was to warm the piece pro- 
gressively to the final flaming-forth of the catastophe. 
A philosophic calm settled upon the clear brow of G. 
as it approached. The lips of M. quivered. A chal- 
lenge was held forth upon the stage, and there was 
promise of a fight. The pit roused themselves on this 
extraordinary occasion, and, as their manner is, seemed 
disposed to make a ring ; when suddenly Antonio, 
who was the challenged, turning the tables upon the hot 
challenger, Don Gusman (who, by the way, should 
have had his sister), balks his humor, and the pit's 



AND GODWIN'S TKAGEDY OF "ANTONIO." 57 

reasonable expectation at the same time, with some 
speeches out of the new philosophy against duelling. 
The audience were here fairly caught ; their courage 
was up, and on the alert; a few blows, ding dong, as 

B, s, the dramatist, afterwards expressed it to me, 

might have done the business, — when their most ex- 
quisite moral sense was suddenly called in to assist in 
the mortifying negation of their own pleasure. They 
could not applaud, for disappointment ; they would not 
condemn, for morality's sake. The interest stood stone- 
still ; and John's manner was not at all calculated to 
unpetrify it. It was Christmas-time, and the atmos- 
phere furnished some pretext for asthmatic affections. 
One began to cough : his neighbor sympathized with 
him, till a cough became epidemical. But when, from 
being half artificial in the pit, the cough got frightfully 
naturalized among the fictitious persons of the drama, 
and Antonio himself (albeit it was not set down in the 
stage directions) seemed more intent upon relieving his 
own lungs than the distresses of the author and his 
friends, then G. "first knew fear," and, mildly turn- 
ing to M. , intimated that he had not been aware that 
Mr. Kemble labored under a cold, and that the per- 
formance might possibly have been postponed with 
advantage for some nights further, — still keeping the 
same serene countenance, while M. sweat like a bull. 

It would be invidious to pursue the fates of this ill- 
starred evening. In vain did the plot thicken in the 
scenes that followed, in vain the dialogue wax more 
passionate and stirring, and the progress of the senti- 
ment point more and more clearly to the arduous 
development which impended. In vain the action was 



58 JOHN KEMBLE, 

accelerated, while the acting stood still. From the 
beginning, John had taken his stand, — had wound 
himself up to an even tenor of stately declamation, 
from which no exigence of dialogue or person could 
make him swerve for an instant. To dream of his 
rising with the scene (the common trick of tragedians) 
was preposterous ; for from the onset he had planted 
himself, as upon a terrace, on an eminence vastly above 
the audience, and he kept that sublime level to the end. 
He looked from his throne of elevated sentiment upon 
the under-world of spectators with a most sovereign and 
becoming contempt. There was excellent pathos deliv- 
ered out to them : an they would receive it, so ; an 
they would not receive it, so. There was no offence 
against decorum in all this ; nothing to condemn, to 
damn : not an irreverent symptom of a sound was 
to be heard. The procession of verbiage stalked on 
through four and five acts, no one venturing to predict 
what would come of it ; when, towards the winding-up 
of the latter, Antonio, with an irrelevancy that seemed 
to stagger Elvira herself, — for she had been coolly 
arguing the point of honor with him, — suddenly whips 
out a poniard, and stabs his sister to the heart. The 
effect was as if a murder had been committed in cold 
blood. The whole house rose up in clamorous indigna- 
tion, demanding justice. The feeling rose far above 
hisses. I believe at that instant, if they could have got 
him, they would have torn the unfortunate author to 
pieces. Not that the act itself was so exorbitant, or of a 
complexion different from what they themselves would 
have applauded upon another occasion in a Brutus or an 
Appius ; but, for want of attending to Antonio's words. 



AND GODWIN'S TRAGEDY OF "ANTONIO." 59 

which palpably led to the expectation of no less clire an 
event, instead of being seduced by his manner, which 
seemed to promise a sleep of a less alarming nature 
than it was his cue to inflict upon Elvira, they found 
themselves betrayed into an accompliceship of murder, 
a perfect misprision of parricide, while they dreamed 
of nothing less. 

M., I believe, was the only person who suffered 
acutely from the failure ; for G. thenceforward, with a 
serenity unattainable but by the true philosophy, aban- 
doning a precarious popularity, retired into his fast hold 
of speculation, — the drama in which the world was to 
be his tiring-room, and remote posterity his applauding 
spectators at once and actors. 



THE GOOD CLERK, A CHARACTER; 

i 

WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF "THE COMPLETE ENGLISH 
TRADESMAN." * 

The Good Clerk. — He writeth a fair and swift hand, 
and is competently versed in the four first rules of arith- 
metic, in the Rule of Three (which is sometimes called 
the Golden Rule), and in Practice. We mention these 
things that we may leave no room for cavillers to say 
that any thing essential hath been omitted in our defini- 
tion ; else, to speak the truth, these are but ordinary 

* From the "Reflector." No. 4. 



60 THE GOOD CLERK. 

accomplishments, and such as every understrapper at a 
desk is commonly furnished with. The character we 
treat of soareth higher. 

He is clean and neat in his person, not from a vain- 
glorious desire of setting himself forth to advantage in 
the eyes of the other sex, with which vanity too many 
of our young sparks now-a-days are infected; but to 
do credit, as we say, to the office. For this reason, he 
evermore taketh care that his desk or his books receive 
no soil ; the which things he is commonly as solicitous 
to have fair and unblemished, as the owner of a fine 
horse is to have him appear in good keep. 

He riseth early in the morning; not because early 
rising conduceth to health (though he doth not alto- 
gether despise that consideration), but chiefly to the 
intent that he may be first at the desk. There is his 
post, there he delighteth to be, unless when his meals 
or necessity calleth him away ; which time he alway es- 
teemeth as lost, and maketh as short as possible. 

He is temperate in eating and drinking, that he may 
preserve a clear head and steady hand for his master's 
service. He is also partly induced to this observation 
of the rules of temperance by his respect for religion 
and the laws of his country ; which things, it may once 
for all be noted, do add special assistances to his actions, 
but do not and cannot furnish the main spring or motive 
thereto. His first ambition, as appeareth all along, is 
to be a good clerk ; his next, a good Christian, a good 
patriot, &c. 

Correspondent to this, he keepeth himself honest, not 
for fear of the laws, but because he hath observed how 
unseemly an article it maketh in the day-book or ledger 



"THE COMPLETE ENGLISH TRADESMAN." 61 

when a sum is set down lost or missing ; it being his 
pride to make these books to agree and to tally, the one 
side with the other, with a sort of architectural sym- 
metry and correspondence. 

He marrieth, or marrieth not, as best suiteth with his 
employer's views. Some merchants do the rather desire 
to have married men in their counting-houses, because 
they think the married state a pledge for their servants' 
integrity, and an incitement to them to be industrious ; 
and it was an observation of a late Lord-Mayor of Lon- 
don, that the sons of clerks do generally prove clerks 
themselves, and that merchants encouraging persons in 
their employ to marry, and to have families, was the best 
method of securing a breed of sober, industrious young 
men attached to the mercantile interest. Be this as it 
may, such a character as we have been describing will 
wait till the pleasure of his employer is known on this 
point ; and regulateth his desires by the custom of the 
house or firm to which he belongeth. 

He avoideth profane oaths and jesting, as so much 
time lost from his employ. What spare time he hath 
for conversation, which, in a counting-house such as we 
have been supposing, can be but small, he spendeth in 
putting seasonable questions to such of his fellows (and 
sometimes respectfully to the master himself) who can 
give him information respecting the price and quality of 
goods, the state of exchange, or the latest improvements 
in book-keeping; thus making the motion of his lips, 
as well as of his fingers, subservient to his master's 
interest. Not that he refuseth a brisk saying, or a 
cheerful sally of wit, when it comes unforced, is free 
of offence, and hath a convenient brevity. For this 



62 THE GOOD CLERK. 

reason, he hath commonly some such phrase as this in 
his mouth : — 

" It's a slovenly look 
To blot your book." 

Or, 

" Red ink for ornament, black for use : 
The best of things are open to abuse." 

So upon the eve of any great holy-day, of which he 
keepeth one or two at least every year, he will merrily 
say, in the hearing of a confidential friend, but to none 
other, — 

" All work and no play 
Makes Jack a dull boy." 

Or, 

"A bow always bent must crack at last." 

But then this must always be understood to be spoken 
confidentially, and, as we say, under the rose. 

Lastly, his dress is plain, without singularity ; with 
no other ornament than the quill, which is the badge of 
his function, stuck behind the dexter ear, and this rather 
for convenience of having it at hand, when he hath been 
called away from his desk, and expecteth to resume his 
seat there again shortly, than from any delight which he 
taketh in foppery or ostentation. The color of his 
clothes is generally noted to be black rather than brown, 
brown rather than blue or green. His whole deport- 
ment is staid, modest, and civil. His motto is " Kegu- 
larity." 

This character was sketched in an interval of busi- 
ness, to divert some of the melancholy hours of a count- 
ing-house. It is so little a creature of fancy, that it is 
scarce any thing more than a recollection of some of those 
frugal and economical maxims, which, about the begin- 
ning of the last century (England's meanest period), 



"THE COMPLETE ENGLISH TRADESMAN." 63 

were endeavored to be inculcated and instilled into the 
breasts of the London Apprentices * by a class of in- 
structors who might not inaptly be termed " The Mas- 
ters of Mean Morals." The astonishing narrowness and 
illiberality of the lessons contained in some of those 
books is inconceivable by those whose studies have not 
led them that way, and would almost induce one to sub- 
scribe to the hard censure which Drayton has passed 
upon the mercantile spirit : — 

" The gripple merchant, born to be the curse 
Of this brave isle." 

I have now lying before me that curious book by Dan- 
iel Defoe, "The Complete English Tradesman." The 
pompous detail, the studied analysis of every little mean 
art, every sneaking address, every trick and subterfuge, 
short of larceny, that is necessary to the tradesman's 
occupation, with the hundreds of anecdotes, dialogues 
(in Defoe's liveliest manner) interspersed, all tending to 
the same amiable purpose, — namely, the sacrificing of 
every honest emotion of the soul to what he calls the 
main chance, — if you read it in an ironical sense, and as 
a piece of covered satire, make it one of the most amusing 
books which Defoe ever writ, as much so as any of his 
best novels. It is difficult to say what his intention 
was in writing it. It is almost impossible to suppose 
him in earnest. Yet such is the bent of the book to 
narrow and to degrade the heart, that if such maxims 
were as catching and infectious as those of a licentious 
cast, which happily is not the case, had I been living at 

* This term designated a larger class of young men than that to which it 
is now confined. It took in the articled clerks of merchants and bankers, the 
George Barnwells of the day. 



64 THE GOOD CLERK. 

that time, I certainly should have recommended to the 
Grand Jury of Middlesex, who presented " The Fable of 
the Bees," to have presented this book of Defoe's in pref- 
erence, as of a far more vile and debasing tendency. 
I will give one specimen of his advice to the young 
tradesman on the government of his temper : " The retail 
tradesman in especial, and even every tradesman in his 
station, must furnish himself with a competent stock of 
patience. I mean that sort of patience which is need- 
ful to bear with all sorts of impertinence, and the most 
provoking curiosity that it is impossible to imagine the 
buyers, even the worst of them, are, or can be, guilty 
of. A tradesman behind his counter must have no flesh and 
blood about him, no passions, no resentment ; he must never 
be angry, no, not so much as seem to be so, if a cus- 
tomer tumbles him five hundred pounds' worth of goods, 
and scarce bids money for any thing ; nay, though they 
really come to his shop with no intent to buy, as many 
do, only to see what is to be sold, and though he knows 
they cannot be better pleased than they are at some 
other shop where they intend to buy, 'tis all one ; the 
tradesman must take it ; he must place it to the account 
of his calling, that 'tis his business to be ill used, and resent 
nothing ; and so must answer as obligingly to those that 
give him an hour or two's trouble, and buy nothing, as 
he does to those, who, in half the time, lay out ten or 
twenty pounds. The case is plain ; and if some do give 
him trouble, and do not buy, others make amends, and do 
buy ; and as for the trouble, 'tis the business of the shop." 
Here follows a most admirable story of a mercer, 
who by his indefatigable meanness, and more than 
Socratic patience under affronts, overcame and recon- 



"THE COMPLETE ENGLISH TRADESMAN." 65 

cilecl a lady, who, upon the report of another lady that 
he had behaved saucily to some third lady, had deter- 
mined to shun his shop, but, by the over-persuasions of a 
fourth lady, was induced to go to it; which she does, 
declaring beforehand that she will buy nothing, but give 
him all the trouble she can. Her attack and his defence, 
her insolence and his persevering patience, are described 
in colors worthy of a Mandeville ; but it is too long to 
recite. " The short inference from this long discourse," 
says he, "is this, — that here you see, and I could give 
you many examples like this, how and in what manner 
a shop-keeper is to behave himself in the way of his 
business ; what impertinences, what taunts, flouts, and 
ridiculous things, he must bear in his trade ; and must 
not show the least return, or the least signal of disgust : 
he must have no passions, no fire in his temper ; he 
must be all soft and smooth ; nay, if his real temper be 
naturally fiery and hot, he must show none of it in his 
shop ; he must be a perfect complete hypocrite if he will be 
a complete tradesman .* It is true, natural tempers are 
not to be always counterfeited : the man cannot easily 
be a lamb in his shop, and a lion in himself; but, let it 
be easy or hard, it must be done, and is done. There are 
men who have by custom and usage brought themselves 
to it, that nothing could be meeker and milder than they 
when behind the counter, and yet nothing be more furi- 
ous and raging in every other part of life : nay, the 
provocations they have met with in their shops have so 
irritated their rage, that they would go up stairs from 
their shop, and fall into frenzies, and a kind of mad- 

* As no qualification accompanies this maxim, it must be understood as 
the genuine sentiment of the author ! 

5 



66 THE GOOD CLERK. 

ness, and beat their heads against the wall, and perhaps 
mischief themselves, if not prevented, till the violence 
of it had gotten vent, and the passions abate and cool. 
I heard once of a shop-keeper that behaved himself thus 
to such an extreme, that, when he was provoked by the 
impertinence of the customers beyond what his temper 
could bear, he would go up stairs and beat his wife, 
kick his children about like dogs, and be as furious for 
two or three minutes as a man chained down in Bed- 
lam ; and again, when that heat was over, would sit 
down, and cry faster than the children he had abused; 
and, after the fit, he would go down into the shop again, 
and be as humble, courteous, and as calm, as any man 
whatever ; so absolute a government of his passions had 
he in the shop, and so little out of it : in the shop, a 
soulless animal that would resent nothing ; and in the 
family, a madman : in the shop, meek like a lamb ; but 
in the family outrageous, like a Lybian lion. The sum 
of the matter is, it is necessary for a tradesman to sub- 
ject himself, by all the ways possible, to his business ; 
his customers are to be his idols : so far as he may worship 
idols by allowance, he is to bow down to them, and worship 
them; at least, he is not in any way to displease them, 
or show any disgust or distaste, whatsoever they may 
say or do. The bottom of all is, that he is intending 
to get money by them ; and it is not for him that gets 
money to offer the least inconvenience to them by 
whom he gets it : he is to consider, that, as Solomon 
says, "the borrower is servant to the lender ;" so the sell- 
er is servant to the buyer. What he says on the head 
of " Pleasures and Recreations " is not less amusing : 
" The tradesman's pleasure should be in his business ; 



REMINISCENCE OF SIR JEFFERY DUNSTAN. 67 

his companions should be his books (he means his 
ledger, waste-book, &c.) ; and, if he has a family, he 
makes his excursions up stairs, and no further. None of 
my cautions aim at restraining a tradesman from divert- 
ing himself, as we call it, with his fireside, or keeping 
company with his wife and children." Liberal allow- 
ance ! nay, almost licentious and criminal indulgence ! 
But it is time to dismiss this Philosopher of Meanness. 
More of this stuff would illiberalize the pages of the 
"Reflector." Was the man in earnest, when he could 
bring such powers of description, and all the charms of 
natural eloquence, in commendation of the meanest, 
vilest, wretchedest degradations of the human character? 
or did he not rather laugh in his sleeve at the doctrines 
which he inculcated ; and, retorting upon the grave citi- 
zens of London their own arts, palm upon them a sam- 
ple of disguised satire under the name of wholesome 
instruction ? 



REMINISCENCE OF SIR JEFFERY DUNSTAN. 

To the Editor of the " Every-day Book." 

To your account of Sir JefFery Dunstan, in columns 
829-30 (where, by an unfortunate erratum, the effigies 
of two Sir Jefferys appear, when the uppermost figure 
is clearly meant for Sir Harry Dimsdale) , you may add 
that the writer of this has frequently met him in his 
latter days, about 1790 or 1791, returning in an even- 
ing, after his long day's itineracy, to his domicile, - — a 
wretched shed in the most beggarly purlieu of Bethnal 



68 REMINISCENCE OF SIR JEFFERY DUNSTAN. 

Green, a little on this side the Mile-end Turnpike. The 
lower figure in that leaf most correctly describes his then 
appearance, except that no graphic art can convey an 
idea of the general squalor of it, and of his bag (his 
constant concomitant) in particular. Whether it con- 
tained " old wigs " at that time, I know not ; but it 
seemed a fitter repository for bones snatched out of 
kennels than for any part of a gentleman's dress, even 
at second-hand. 

The ex-member for Garrat was a melancholy instance 
of a great man whose popularity is worn out. He 
still carried his sack ; but it seemed a part of his identity 
rather than an implement of his profession ; a badge of 
past grandeur : could any thing have divested him of that, 
he would have shown a " poor forked animal " indeed. 
My life upon it, it contained no curls at the time I 
speak of. The most decayed and spiritless remnants of 
what was once a peruke would have scorned the filthy 
case; would absolutely have "burst its cerements." 
No : it was empty, or brought home bones, or a few 
cinders possibly. A strong odor of burnt bones, I 
remember, blended with the scent of horse-flesh seeth- 
ing into dog's meat, and, only relieved a little by the 
breathings of a few brick-kilns, made up the atmos- 
phere of the delicate suburban spot which this great 
man had chosen for the last scene of his earthly vani- 
ties. The cry of " old wigs " had ceased with the pos- 
session of any such fripperies : his sack might have 
contained not unaptly a little mould to scatter upon 
that grave to which he was now advancing ; but it told 
of vacancy and desolation. His quips were silent too, 
and his brain was empty as his sack : he slank along, 



REMINISCENCE OF SIR JEFFERY DUNSTAN. 69 

and seemed to decline popular observation. If a few 
bovs followed him, it seemed rather from habit than 
any expectation of fun. 

" Alas ! how changed from him. 
The life of humor, and the soul of whim, 
Gallant and gay on Garrat's hustings proud! " 

But it is thus that the world rewards its favorites in 
decay. What faults he had, I know not. I have heard 
something of a peccadillo or so. But some little devia- 
tion from the precise line of rectitude might have been 
winked at in so tortuous and stigmatic a frame. Poor 
Sir Jeffery ! it were well if some M. P.'s in earnest 
have passed their parliamentary existence with no more 
offences against integrity than could be laid to thy 
charge ! A fair dismissal was thy due, not so unkind 
a degradation ; some little snug retreat, with a bit of 
green before thine eyes, and not a burial alive in the 
fetid beo'o-aries of Bethnal. Thou wouldst have ended 
thy days in a manner more appropriate to thy pristine 
dignity, installed in munificent mockery (as in mock 
honors you had lived) , — a poor knight of Windsor ! 

Every distinct place of public speaking demands an 
oratory peculiar to itself. The forensic fails within the 
walls of St. Stephen. Sir Jeffery was a living instance 
of this ; for, in the flower of his popularity, an attempt 
was made to bring him out upon the stage (at which 
of the winter theatres I forget, but I well remember the 
anecdote) in the part of Doctor Last.* The announce- 
ment drew a crowded house ; but, notwithstanding infi- 
nite tutoring, — by Foote or Grarrick, I forget which, — 
when the curtain drew up, the heart of Sir Jeffery 

* It was at the Haymarket Theatre. — Editor of " Every-day Book." 



70 ON A PASSAGE IN "THE TEMPEST." 

failed, and he faltered on, and made nothing of his 
part, till the hisses of the house at last, in very kindness, 
dismissed him from the boards. Great as his parlia- 
mentary eloquence had shown itself, brilliantly as his 
off-hand sallies had sparkled on a hustings, they here 
totally failed him. Perhaps he had an aversion to 
borrowed wit, and, like my Lord Foppington, dis- 
dained to entertain himself (or others) with the forced 
products of another man's brain. Your man of quality 
is more diverted with the natural sprouts of his own. 



ON A PASSAGE IN "THE TEMPEST."* 

As long as I can remember the play of w The Tempest," 
one passage in it has always set me upon wondering. 
It has puzzled me beyond measure. In vain I strove 
to find the meaning of it. I seemed doomed to cherish 
infinite, hopeless curiosity. 

It is where Prospero, relating the banishment of 
Sycorax from Argier, adds, — 

" For one thing that she did, 
They would not take her life." 

How have I pondered over this when a boy ! How 
have I longed for some authentic memoir of the witch 
to clear up the obscurity ! Was the story extant in the 
chronicles of Algiers ? Could I get at it by some fortu- 
nate introduction to the Algerine ambassador? Was a 
voyage thither practicable? The Spectator, I knew, 

* From the " London Magazine " for 1823. 



OX A PASSAGE IN "THE TEMPEST." 71 

went to Grand Cairo only to measure the pyramid. 
Was not the object of my quest of at least as much im- 
portance ? The blue-eyed hag ! could she have done any 
tiling o-ood or meritorious ? might that succubus relent ? 
then might there be hope for the Devil. I have often 
admired since, that none of the commentators have bog- 
gled at tins passage ; how they could swallow this 
camel, — such a tantalizing piece of obscurity, such an 
abortion of an anecdote. 

At length, I think I have lighted upon a clew which 
may lead to show what was passing in the mind of 
Shakspeare when he dropped this imperfect rumor. 
In the "Accurate Description of Africa, by John Ogilby 
(folio), 1670," page 230, I find written as follows. 
The marginal title to the narrative is, " Charles the Fifth 
besieges Algier." 

" In the last place, we will briefly give an account of 
the emperour, Charles the Fifth, when he besieg'd this 
city ; and of the great loss he suffered therein. 

" This prince, in the year one thousand five hundred 
forty-one, having embarqued upon the sea an army of 
twenty-two thousand men aboard eighteen gallies, and 
an hundred tall ships, not counting the barques and 
shallops, and other small boats, in which he had engaged 
the principal of the Spanish and Italian nobility, with a 
good number of the Knights of Malta ; he was to land 
on the coast of Barbary, at a cape call'd Matifou. From 
this place unto the city of Algier, a flat shore or strand 
extends itself for about four leagues, the which is exceed- 
ing favorable to gallies. There he put ashore with his 
army, and in a few days caused a fortress to be built, 
which unto tins day is call'd the castle of the Emperour. 



72 OF A PASSAGE IN "THE TEMPEST." 

"In the meantime the city of Algier took the alarm, 
having in it at that time but eight hundred Turks, and 
six thousand Moors, poor-spirited men, and unexercised 
in martial affairs ; besides it was at that time fortifi'd 
only with walls, and had no out-works : insomuch that 
by reason of its weakness, and the great forces of the 
Emperour, it could not in appearance escape taking. 
In fine, it was attempted with such order, that the army 
came up to the very gates, where the Chevalier de Sauig- 
nac, a Frenchman by nation, made himself remarkable 
above all the rest, by the miracles of his valor. For 
having repulsed the Turks, who, having made a sally at 
the gate call'd Babason, and there desiring to enter 
along with them, when he saw that they shut the gate 
upon him, he ran his ponyard into the same, and left it 
sticking deep therein. They next fell to battering the 
city by the force of cannon ; which the assailants so 
weakened, that in that great extremity the defendants 
lost their courage, and resolved to surrender. 

" But as they were thus intending, there was a witch 
of the town, whom the history doth not name, which 
went to seek out Assam Aga, that commanded within, 
and pray'd him to make it good yet nine days longer, 
with assurance, that within that time he should infallibly 
see Algier delivered from that siege, and the whole army 
of the enemy dispersed^ so that Christians should be as 
cheap as birds. Imaword, the thing did happen in the 
manner as foretold : ; for upon the twenty-first day of 
October, in the same year, there fell a continual rain 
upon the land, and' so furious a storm at sea, that one 
might have seen ships hoisted into the clouds, and in 
one instant again precipitated into the bottom of the 



OX A PASSAGE IX "THE TEMPEST." 73 

water : insomuch that that same dreadful tempest was 
followed with the loss of fifteen gallies, and above an 
hundred other vessels ; winch was the cause why the 
Emperour, seeing his army wasted by the bad weather, 
pursued by a famine, occasioned by wrack of his ships, in 
which was the greatest part of his victuals and amuni- 
tion, he was constraint! to raise the siege, and set sail 
for Sicily, whither he retreated with the miserable rel- 
iques of his fleet. 

"In the meantime that witch being acknowledged 
the deliverer of Algier, was richly remunerated, and the 
credit of her charms authorized. So that ever since, 
witchcraft hath been very freely tolerated ; of which the 
chief of the town, and even those who are esteem'd to 
be of greatest sanctity among them, such as are the 
Marabous, a religious order of their sect, do for the 
most part make profession of it, under a goodly pre- 
text of certain revelations which they say they have had 
from their prophet, Mahomet. 

"And hereupon those of Algier, to palliate the shame 
and the reproaches that are thrown upon them for mak- 
ing use of a witch in the danger of this siege, do say 
that the loss of the forces of Charles V. was caused by 
a prayer of one of their Marabous, named Cidy Utica, 
which was at that time in great credit, not under the 
notion of a magitian, but for a person of a holy life. 
Afterwards in remembrance of their success, they have 
erected unto him a small mosque without the Babason 
gate, where he is buried, and in which they keep sundry 
J amps burning in honor of him : nay they sometimes 
repair thither to make their sola, for a testimony of 
greater veneration." 



74 THE MONTHS. 

Can it be doubted, for a moment, that the dramatist 
had come fresh from reading some older narrative of this 
deliverance of Algier by a witch, and transferred the 
merit of the deed to his Sycorax, exchanging only the 
"rich remuneration," which did not suit his purpose, to 
the simple pardon of her life? Ogilby wrote in 1670 ; 
but the authorities to which he refers for his account 
of Barbary are Johannes de Leo or Africanus, Louis 
Marmol, Diego de Haedo, Johannes Gramaye, Braeves, 
Cel. Curio, and Diego de Torres, names totally unknown 
to me, and to which I beg leave to refer the curious 
reader for his fuller satisfaction. 



THE MONTHS.* 

Rummaging over the contents of an old stall at a 
half book, half old-iron shop, in an alley leading from 
Wardour Street to Soho Square, yesterday, I lit upon a 
ragged duodecimo which had been the strange delight 
of my infancy, and which I had lost sight of for more 
than forty years, — the "Queen -like Closet, or Eich 
Cabinet ; " written by Hannah Woolly, and printed 
for R. C. and T. S., 1681 ; being an abstract of re- 
ceipts in cookery, confectionery, cosmetics, needle- 
work, morality, and all such branches of what were 
then considered as female accomplishments. The price 
demanded was sixpence, which the owner (a little squab 

* From Hone's " Every-day Book." 



THE MONTHS. 75 

duodecimo of a character himself) enforced with the 
assurance that his " own mother should not have it for a 
farthing less." On my demurring at this extraordinary 
assertion, the dirty little vender re-enforced his assertion 
with a sort of oath, which seemed more than the occasion 
demanded : "And now," said he, "I have put my soul 
to it." Pressed by so solemn an asseveration, I could 
no longer resist a demand which seemed to set me, 
however unworthy, upon a level with his dearest rela- 
tions ; and, depositing a tester, I bore away the tattered 
prize in triumph. I remembered a gorgeous descrip- 
tion of the twelve months of the year, which I thought 
would be a fine substitute for those poetical descriptions 
of them which your " Every-day Book " had nearly ex- 
hausted out of Spenser. " This will be a treat," thought 
I, "for friend Hone." To memory they seemed no less 
fantastic and splendid than the other. But what are the 
mistakes of childhood ! On reviewing them, they turned 
out to be only a set of commonplace receipts for work- 
ing the seasons, months, heathen gods and goddesses, 
&c. , in samplers ! Yet, as an instance of the homely 
occupations of our great-grandmothers, they may be 
amusing to some readers. " I have seen," says the no- 
table Hannah Woolly, " such ridiculous things done in 
work, as it is an abomination to any artist to behold. 
As for example : You may find, in some pieces, Abra- 
ham and Sarah, and many other persons of old time, 
clothed as they go now-a-days, and truly sometimes 
worse ; for they most resemble the pictures on ballads. 
Let all ingenious women have regard, that when they 
work any image, to represent it aright. First, let it be 
drawn well, and then observe the directions which are 






76 THE MONTHS. 

given by knowing men. I do assure you, I never 
durst work any Scripture-story without informing myself 
from the ground of it ; nor any other story, or single 
person, without informing myself both of the visage 
and habit ; as followeth : — 

" If you work Jupiter, the imperial feigned God, he 
must have long, black, curled hair, a purple garment 
trimmed with gold, and sitting upon a golden throne, 
with bright yellow clouds about him." 

THE TWELVE MONTHS OF THE YEAR. 

March. Is drawn in tawny, with a fierce aspect ; a 
helmet upon his head, and leaning on a spade ; and 
a basket of garden seeds in his left hand, and in his 
right hand the sign of Aries ; and winged. 

April. A young man in green, with a garland of 
myrtle and hawthorn-buds ; winged ; in one hand prim- 
roses and violets, in the other the sign Taurus. 

May. With a sweet and lovely countenance ; clad in a 
robe of white and green, embroidered with several flow- 
ers ; upon his head a garland of all manner of roses ; on 
the one hand a nightingale, in the other a lute. His 
sign must be Gemini. 

June. In a mantle of dark grass-green ; upon his 
head a garland of bents, kings-cups, and maiden-hair ; 
in his left hand an angle, with a box of cantharides ; in 
his right, the sign Cancer ; and upon his arms a basket 
of seasonable fruits. 

July. In a jacket of light yellow, eating cherries ; 
with his face and bosom sun-burnt ; on his head a 
wreath of centaury and wild thyme ; a scythe on his 



THE MONTHS. 77 

shoulder, and a bottle at his girdle ; carrying the sign 
Leo. 

August. A young man of fierce and choleric aspect, 
in a flame-colored garment ; upon his head a garland 
of wheat and rye ; upon Ins arm a basket of all manner 
of ripe fruits ; at his belt a sickle : his sign Virgo. 

September. A merry and cheerful countenance, in a 
purple robe ; upon his head a wreath of red and white 
grapes ; in his left hand a handful of oats ; withal car- 
rying a horn of plenty, full of all manner of ripe fruits ; 
in his right hand the sign Libra. 

October. In a garment of yellow and carnation ; upon 
his head a garland of oak-leaves with acorns ; in his 
right hand the sign Scorpio ; in his left hand a basket 
of medlars, services, and chestnuts, and any other fruits 
then in season. 

November. In a garment of changeable green and 
black; upon his head a garland of olives, with the fruit 
in his left hand ; bunches of parsnips and turnips in his 
right : his sign Sagittarius. 

December. A horrid and fearful aspect, clad in Irish 
rags, or coarse frieze girt unto him ; upon his head three 
or four night-caps, and over them a Turkish turban ; 
his nose red, his mouth and beard clogged with icicles ; 
at his back a bundle of holly, ivy, or mistletoe ; holding 
in furred mittens the sign of Capricornus. 

January. Clad all in white, as the earth looks with 
the snow, blowing his nails ; in his left arm a billet ; 
the sign Aquarius standing by his side. 

February. Clothed in a dark sky-color, carrying in 
his right hand the sign Pisces. 

The following receipt, " To dress up a chimney very 



78 THE MONTHS. 

fine for the summer time, as I have done many, and 
they have been liked very well," may not be unprofita- 
ble to the housewives of this century : — 

" First, take a pack-thread, and fasten it even to the 
inner part of the chimney, so high as that you can see 
no higher as you walk up and down the house. You 
must drive in several nails to hold up all your work. 
Then get good store of old green moss from trees, and 
melt an equal proportion of beeswax and rosin together; 
and, while it is hot, dip the wrong ends of the moss in 
it, and presently clap it upon your pack-thread, and 
press it down hard with your hand. You must make 
haste, else it will cool before you can fasten it, and then 
it will fall down. Do so all around where the pack- 
thread goes ; and the next row you must join to that, so 
that it may seem all in one : thus do till you have 
finished it down to the bottom. Then take some other 
kind of moss, of a whitish color and stiff, and of several 
sorts or kinds, and place that upon the other, here and 
there carelessly, and in some places put a good deal, 
and some a little ; then any kind of fine snail-shells, in 
which the snails are dead, and little toad-stools, which 
are very old, and look like velvet, or any other thing 
that was old and pretty : place it here and there as your 
fancy serves, and fasten all with wax and rosin. Then, 
for the hearth of your chimney, you may lay some 
orpan-sprigs in order all over, and it will grow as it 
lies ; and, according to the season, get what flowers you 
can, and stick in as if they grew, and a few sprigs of 
sweet-brier : the flowers you must renew every week ; 
but the moss will last all the summer, till it will be 
time to make a fire ; and the orpan will last near two 



THE MONTHS. 79 

months. A chimney thus done doth grace a room ex- 
ceedingly." * 

One phrase in the above should particularly recom- 
mend it to such of your female readers as, in the nice 
language of the day, have done growing some time, — 
"little toad-stools, &c, and any thing that is old and 
pretty." Was ever antiquity so smoothed over? The 
culinary recipes have nothing remarkable in them, 
except the costliness of them. Every thing (to the 
meanest meats) is sopped in claret, steeped in claret, 
basted with claret, as if claret were as cheap as 
ditch-water. I remember Bacon recommends open- 
ing a turf or two in your garden-walks, and pouring 
into each a bottle of claret, to recreate the sense of 
smelling, being no less grateful than beneficial. We 
hope the chancellor of the exchequer will attend to this 
in his next reduction of French wines, that we may 
once more water our gardens with right Bourdeaux. 
The medical recipes are as whimsical as they are cruel. 
Our ancestors were not at all effeminate on this head. 
Modern sentimentalists would shrink at a cock plucked 
and bruised in a mortar alive to make a cullis, or a 
live mole baked in an oven (be sure it be alive) to make 
a powder for consumption. But the whimsicalist of all 
are the directions to servants (for this little book is 
a compendium of all duties) : the footman is seriously 
admonished not to stand lolling against his master's 
chair while he waits at table ; for " to lean on a chair 
when they wait is a particular favor shown to any 

* Alas ! in these days of stoves and furnaces, we have no " chimneys " 
or fireplaces to "dress up 1 ' in the beautiful manner Mistress Woolly de- 
scribes. — Editor. 



80 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF MR. LISTON. 

superior servant, as the chief gentleman, or the waiting- 
woman when she rises from the table." Also he must 
not " hold the plates before his mouth to be denied with 
his breath, nor touch them on the right [inner] side." 
Surely Swift must have seen this little treatise. 

Hannah concludes with the following address, by 
which the self-estimate which she formed of her useful- 
ness may be calculated : — 

" Ladies, I hope you're pleas'd and so shall I 
If what I've writ, you may be gainers by : 
If not; it is your fault, it is not mine, 
Your benefit in this I do design. 
Much labor and much time it hath me cost. 
Therefore I beg, let none of it be lost. 
The money you shall pay for this my book, 
You'll not repent of, when in it you look. 
No more at present to you I shall say, 
But wish you all the happiness I may." 



BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF MR. LISTON.* 

The subject of our Memoir is lineally descended 
from Johan de L'Estonne (see "Domesday Book," 
where he is so written) , who came in with the Con- 
queror, and had lands awarded him at Lupton Magna, 
in Kent. His particular merits or services, Fabian, 
whose authority I chiefly follow, has forgotten, or per- 
haps thought it immaterial, to specify. Fuller thinks 
that he was standard-bearer to Hugo de Agmondesham, 
a powerful Norman baron, who was slain by the hand 

* From the " London Magazine," 1825. 



BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF MR. LISTON. 81 

of Harold himself at the fatal battle of Hastings. Be 
this as it may, we find a family of that name flourishing 
some centuries later in that county. John Delliston, 
knight, was high sheriff for Kent, according to Fabian, 
quinto Henrici Sexli ; and we trace the lineal branch 
flourishing downwards, — the orthography varying, ac- 
cording to the unsettled usage of the times, from Delles- 
ton to Leston or Liston, between which it seems to 
have alternated, till, in the latter end of the reign of 
James I., it finally settled into the determinate and 
pleasing dissyllabic arrangement which it still retains. 
Aminadab Liston, the eldest male representative of the 
family of that day, was of the strictest order of Puri- 
tans. Mr. Foss, of Pall Mall, has obligingly com- 
municated to me an undoubted tract of his, which bears 
the initials only, A. L., and is entitled, "The Grinning 
Glass, or Actor's Mirrour ; where in the vituperative 
Visnomy of Vicious Players for the Scene is as vir- 
tuously reflected back upon their mimetic Monstrosities 
as it has viciously (hitherto) vitiated with its vile Vani- 
ties her Votarists." A strange title, but bearing the 
impress of those absurdities with which the title-pages 
of that pamphlet-spawning age abounded. The work 
bears date 1617. It preceded the " Histriomastix " by 
fifteen years ; and, as it went before it in time, so it 
comes not far short of it in virulence. It is amusing 
to find an ancestor of Liston's thus bespattering the 
players at the commencement of the seventeenth cen- 
tury : — 

"Thinketh He" (the actor), "with his costive coun- 
tenances, to wry a sorrowing soul out of her anguish, 



82 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF MR. LISTOK 

or by defacing the divine denotement of destinate 
dignity (daignely described in the face humane and no 
other) to reinstamp the Paradice-plotted similitude with 
a novel and naughty approximation (not in the first 
intention) to those abhorred and ugly God-forbidden 
correspondences, with flouting Apes' jeering gibberings, 
and Babion babbling-like, to hoot out of countenance 
all modest measure, as if our sins were not sufficing to 
stoop our backs without He wresting and crooking his 
members to mistimed mirth (rather malice) in deformed 
fashion, leering when he should learn, prating for pray- 
ing, goggling his eyes (better upturned for grace), 
whereas in Paradice (if we can go thus high for His 
profession) that devilish Serpent appeareth his un- 
doubted Predecessor, first induing a mask like some 
roguish roistering Roscius (I spit at them all) to be- 
guile with Stage shows the gaping Woman, whose Sex 
hath still chiefly upheld these Mysteries, and are voiced 
to be the chief Stage-haunters, where, as I am told, the 
custom is commonly to mumble (between acts) apples, 
not ambiguously derived from that pernicious Pippin 
(worse in effect than the Apples of Discord) , whereas 
sometimes the hissings sounds of displeasure, as I hear, 
do lively reintonate that snake-taking-leave, and dia- 
bolical goings off, in Paradice." 

The Puritanic effervescence of the early Presbyterians 
appears to have abated with time, and the opinions of 
the more immediate ancestors of our subject to have 
subsided at length into a strain of moderate Calvinism. 
Still a tincture of the old leaven was to be expected 
among the posterity of A. L. 



BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF MR. LISTON. 83 

Our hero was an only son of Habakkuk Liston, set- 
tled as an Anabaptist minister upon the patrimonial 
soil of his ancestors. A regular certificate appears, 
thus entered in the Church-book at Lupton Magna : 
"Johannes, films Habakkuk et Rebeccce Liston, Dissentien- 
tium, natus quinto Decembri, 1780, baptizatus sexto Feb- 
ruarii sequentis ; Sponsoribus J. et W. Woollaston, und 
cum Maria Merryweather ." The singularity of an Ana- 
baptist minister conforming to the child-rites of the 
Church would have tempted me to doubt the authen- 
ticity of this entry, had I not been obliged with the 
actual sight of it by the favor of Mr. Minns, the intel- 
ligent and worthy parish clerk of Lupton. Possibly 
some expectation in point of worldly advantages from 
some of the sponsors might have induced this unseemly 
deviation, as it must have appeared, from the practice 
and principles of that generally rigid sect. The term 
Dissentientium was possibly intended by the orthodox 
clergyman as a slur upon the supposed inconsistency. 
What, or of what nature, the expectations we have 
hinted at may have been, we have now no means of 
ascertaining. Of the Woollastons no trace is now dis- 
coverable in the village. The name of Merryweather 
occurs over the front of a grocer's shop at the western 
extremity of Lupton. 

Of the infant Liston we find no events recorded 
before his fourth year, in which a severe attack of the 
measles bid fair to have robbed the rising generation of 
a fund of innocent entertainment. He had it of the 
confluent kind, as it is called ; and the child's life was 
for a week or two despaired of. His recovery he al- 
ways attributes (under Heaven) to the humane inter- 



84 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF MR. LISTON". 

ference of one Dr. Wilhelm Kichter, a German empiric, 
who, in this extremity, prescribed a copious diet of 
sauer-Jcraut, which the child was observed to reach at 
with avidity, when other food repelled him ; and from 
this change of diet his restoration was rapid and com- 
plete. We have often heard him name the circumstance 
with gratitude ; and it is not altogether surprising that 
a relish for this kind of aliment, so abhorrent and harsh 
to common English palates, has accompanied him 
through life. When any of Mr. Liston's intimates 
invite him to supper, he never fails of finding, nearest 
to his knife and fork, a dish of sauer-krmit. 

At the age of nine, we find our subject under the 
tuition of the Rev. Mr. Goodenough (his father's 
health not permitting him probably to instruct him 
himself) , by whom he was inducted into a competent 
portion of Latin and Greek, with some mathematics, 
till the death of Mr. Goodenough, in his own seventieth, 
and Master Liston's eleventh year, put a stop for the 
present to his classical progress. 

We have heard our hero, with emotions which do his 
heart honor, describe the awful circumstances attending 
the decease of this worthy old gentleman. It seems 
they had been walking out together, master and pupil, 
in a fine sunset, to the distance of three-quarters of 
a mile west of Lupton, when a sudden curiosity 
took Mr. Goodenough to look down upon a chasm, 
where a shaft had been lately sunk in a mining specu- 
lation (then projecting, but abandoned soon after, as 
not answering the promised success, by Sir Ralph Shep- 
perton, knight, and member for the county). The 
old clergyman leaning over, either with incaution or 



BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF MR. LISTOK 85 

sudden giddiness (probably a mixture of both), sud- 
denly lost his footing, and, to use Mr. Liston's phrase, 
disappeared, and was doubtless broken into a thousand 
pieces. The sound of his head, &c, dashing succes- 
sively upon the projecting masses of the chasm, had 
such an effect upon the child, that a serious sickness 
ensued ; and, even for many years after his recovery, he 
was not once seen so much as to smile. 

The joint death of both his parents, which happened 
not many months after this disastrous accident, and 
were probably (one or both of them) accelerated by it, 
threw our youth upon the protection of his maternal 
great-aunt, Mrs. Sittingbourn. Of this aunt we have 
never heard him speak but with expressions amounting 
almost to reverence. To the influence of her early 
counsels and manners he has always attributed the firm- 
ness with which, in maturer years, thrown upon a way 
of life commonly not the best adapted to gravity and 
self-retirement, he has been able to maintain a serious 
character, untinctured with the levities incident to his 
profession. Ann Sittingbourn (we have seen her por- 
trait by Hudson) was stately, stiff, tall, with a cast 
of features strikingly resembling the subject of this 
memoir. Her estate in Kent was spacious and well 
wooded ; the house one of those venerable old mansions 
which are so impressive in childhood, and so hardly 
forgotten in succeeding years. In the venerable soli- 
tudes of Charnwood, among thick shades of the oak 
and beach (this last his favorite tree) , the young Liston 
cultivated those contemplative habits which have never 
entirely deserted him in after-years. Here he was com- 
monly in the summer months to be met with, with a 



86 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF MR. LISTON. 

book in his hand, — not a play-book, — meditating. 
Boyle's " Reflections " was at one time the darling vol- 
ume ; which, in its turn, was superseded by Young's 
"Night Thoughts," which has continued its hold upon 
him through life. He carries it always about him ; 
and it is no uncommon thing for him to be seen, 
in the refreshing intervals of his occupation, leaning 
against a side-scene, in a sort of Herbert-of-Cherbury 
posture, turning over a pocket-edition of his favorite 
author. 

But the solitudes of Charnwood were not destined 
always to obscure the path of our young hero. The 
premature death of Mrs. Sittingbourn, at the age of 
seventy, occasioned by incautious burning of a pot of 
charcoal in her sleeping-chamber, left him in his nine- 
teenth year nearly without resources. That the stage 
at all should have presented itself as an eligible scope 
for his talents, and, in particular, that he should have 
chosen a line so foreign to what appears to have been 
his turn of mind, may require some explanation. 

At Charnwood, then, we behold him thoughtful, 
grave, ascetic. From his cradle averse to flesh-meats 
and strong drink ; abstemious even beyond the genius 
of the place, and almost in spite of the remonstrances 
of his great-aunt, who, though strict, was not rigid, — 
water was his habitual drink, and his food little beyond 
the mast and beech-nuts of his favorite groves. It is a 
medical fact, that this kind of diet, however favorable 
to the contemplative powers of the primitive hermits, 
&c, is but ill adapted to the less robust minds and 
bodies of a later generation. Hypochondria almost 
constantly ensues. It was so in the case of the young 



BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF MR. LISTON. 87 

Liston. He was subject to sights, and had visions. 
Those arid beech-nuts, distilled by a complexion natu- 
rally adust, mounted into an occiput already prepared 
to kindle by long seclusion and the fervor of strict 
Calvinistic notions. In the glooms of Charnwood, he 
was assailed by illusions similar in kind to those which 
are related of the famous Anthony of Padua. Wild 
antic faces would ever and anon protrude themselves 
upon his sensorium. Whether he shut his eyes, or kept 
them open, the same illusions operated. The darker 
and more profound were his cogitations, the droller and 
more whimsical became the apparitions. They buzzed 
about him thick as flies, flapping at him, flouting him, 
hooting in his ear, yet with such comic appendages, 
that what at first was his bane became at length his 
solace ; and he desired no better society than that of 
his merry phantasmata. We shall presently find in 
what way this remarkable phenomenon influenced his 
future destiny. 

On the death of Mrs. Sittingbourn, we find him 
received into the family of Mr. Willoughby, an eminent 
Turkey merchant, resident in Birchin Lane, London. 
We lose a little while here the chain of his history, — 
by what inducements this gentlemen was determined to 
make him an inmate of his house. Probably he had 
had some personal kindness for Mrs. Sittingbourn for- 
merly ; but, however it was, the young man was here 
treated more like a son than a clerk, though he was 
nominally but the latter. Different avocations, the 
change of scene, with that alternation of business and 
recreation which in its greatest perfection is to be had 
only in London, appear to have weaned him in a short 



88 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF MR. LISTON. 

time from the hypochondriacal affections which had 
beset him at Charnwood. 

In the three years which followed his removal to 
Birchin Lane, we find him making more than one voy- 
age to the Levant, as chief factor for Mr. Willoughby 
at the Porte. We could easily fill our biography with 
the pleasant passages which we have heard him relate 
as having happened to him at Constantinople ; such as 
his having been taken up on suspicion of a design of 
penetrating the seraglio, &c. : but, with the deepest 
convincement of this gentleman's own veracity, we 
think that some of the stories are of that whimsical, 
and others of that romantic nature, which, however 
diverting, would be out of place in a narrative of this 
kind, which aims not only at strict truth, but at avoid- 
ing the very appearance of the contrary. 

We will now bring him over the seas again, and 
suppose him in the counting-house in Birchin Lane, his 
protector satisfied with the returns of his factorage, and 
all going on so smoothly, that we may expect to find 
Mr. Liston at last an opulent merchant upon 'Change, 
as it is called. But see the turns of destiny ! Upon a 
summer's excursion into Norfolk in the year 1801, the 
accidental sight of pretty Sally Parker, as she was 
called (then in the Norwich company), diverted his 
inclinations at once from commerce ; and he became, in 
the language of commonplace biography, stage-struck. 
Happy for the lovers of mirth was it that our hero took 
this turn ; he might else have been to this hour that 
unentertaining character, a plodding London merchant. 

We accordingly find him shortly after making his 
debute as it is called, upon the Norwich boards, in the 



BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF MR. LISTOK 89 

season of that year, being then in the twenty-second year 
of his age. Having a natural bent to tragedy, he chose 
the part of Pyrrhus, in the "Distressed Mother," to 
Sally Parker's Hermione. We find him afterwards as 
Barnwell, Altamont, Chamont, &c. ; but, as if Nature 
had destined him to the sock, an unavoidable infirmity 
absolutely discapacitated him for tragedy. His person, 
at this latter period of which I have been speaking, was 
graceful, and even commanding ; his countenance set to 
gravity : he had the power of arresting the attention of 
an audience at first sight almost beyond any other tragic 
actor. But he could not hold it. To understand this 
obstacle, we must go back a few years to those appall- 
ing reveries atCharnwood. Those illusions, which had 
vanished before the dissipation of a less recluse life and 
more free society, now in his solitary tragic studies, 
and amid the intense calls upon feeling incident to 
tragic acting, came back upon him with tenfold vivid- 
ness. In the midst of some most pathetic passage (the 
parting of Jamer with his dying friend, for instance), he 
would suddenly be surprised with a fit of violent horse- 
laughter. While the spectators were all sobbing before 
him with emotion, suddenly one of those grotesque 
faces would peep out upon him, and he could not resist 
the impulse. A timely excuse once or twice served his 
purpose ; but no audiences could be expected to bear 
repeatedly this violation of the continuity of feeling. 
He describes them (the illusions) as so many demons 
haunting him, and paralyzing every effect. Even now, 
I am told, he cannot recite the famous soliloquy in 
" Hamlet," even in private, without immoderate bursts 
of laughter. However, what he had not force of reason 



90 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF MR. LISTON. 

sufficient to overcome he had good sense enough to turn 
into emolument, and determined to make a commodity 
of his distemper. He prudently exchanged the buskin 
for the sock, and the illusions instantly ceased ; or, if 
they occurred for a short season, by their very co- 
operation added a zest to his comic vein, — some of his 
most catching faces being (as he expresses it) little 
more than transcripts and copies of those extraordinary 
phantasmata. 

We have now drawn out our hero's existence to the 
period when he was about to meet, for the first time, the 
sympathies of a London audience. The particulars of 
his success since have been too much before our eyes to 
render a circumstantial detail of them expedient. I 
shall only mention, that Mr. Willoughby, his resent- 
ments having had time to subside, is at present one of 
the fastest friends of his old renegado factor ; and that 
Mr. Liston's hopes of Miss Parker vanishing along with 
his unsuccessful suit to Melpomene, in the autumn of 
1811 he married his present lady, by whom he has 
been blessed with one son, Philip, and two daughters, 
Ann and Angustina.* 

* Lamb once said, of all the lies he ever put off, — and he put off a good 
many, — indeed, he valued himself on being " a matter-of-lie man," believ- 
ing truth to be too precious to be wasted upon everybody, — of all the lies 
he ever put off, he valued his "Memoir of Liston " the most. "It is," he 
confessed to Miss Hutchinson, " from top to toe, every paragraph, pure inven- 
tion, and has passed for gospel, — has been republished in the newspapers, 
and in the penny play-bills of the night, as an authentic account." And 
yet, notwithstanding its incidents are all imaginary, its facts all fictions, 
is not Lamb's "Memoir of Liston" a truer and more trustworthy work 
than any of the productions of those contemptible biographers, unfortu- 
nately not yet extinct, so admirably ridiculed in the thirty-fifth number of 
the " Freeholder" ? In fact, is not this " lying Life of Liston" a very clever 
satire on those biographers, who, like the monkish historians mentioned by 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MR. MUNDEN. 91 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MR. MUNDEN* 

IN A LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF THE " LONDON 
MAGAZINE." f 

Hakk'ee, Mr. Editor. A word in jour ear. They 
tell me you are going to put me in print, — in print, 
sir; to publish my life. What is my life to you, sir? 
What is it to you whether I ever lived at all ? My life 
is a very good life, sir. I am insured at the Pelican, 
sir. I am threescore years and six, — six ; mark me, 
sir : but I can play Polonius, which, I believe, few of 
your corre — correspondents can do, sir. I suspect 
tricks, sir : I smell a rat ; I do, I do. You would cog 
the die upon us ; you would, you would, sir. But I 
will forestall you, sir. You would be deriving me from 
William the Conqueror, with a murrain to you. It is 

Fuller in his " Church History of Britain," swell the bowels of their books 
with empty wind, in default of sufficient solid food to fill them; who, 
according to Addison, ascribe to the unfortunate persons, whose lives they 
pretend to write, works which they never wrote, and actions which they never 
performed ; celebrate virtues which they were never famous for, and excuse 
faults they were never guilty of ? And does not Lamb, in this work, very 
happily ridicule the pedantry and conceit of certain grave and dignified biog- 
raphers whose works are to be found in most gentlemen's libraries ? — Editor. 

* From the "London Magazine," 1825. 

t This is another of Lamb's " lie-children." Leigh Hunt, in his Autobi- 
ography, speaking of some of Elia's contributions to the " London Magazine," 
thus mentions the mock Memoirs of Liston and Munden : " He [Lamb] 
wrote in the same magazine two Lives of Liston and Munden, which the pub- 
lic took for serious, and which exhibit an extraordinary jumble of imaginary 
facts and truth of by-painting. Munden he made born at Stoke Pogis; 
the very sound of which was like the actor speaking and digging his 
words." — Editor. 



92 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MR. MUNDEN. 

no such thing, sir. The town shall know better, sir. 
They begin to smoke your flams, sir. Mr. Liston may 
be born where he pleases, sir ; but I will not be born 
at Lup — Lupton Magna for anybody's pleasure, sir. 
My son and I have looked over the great map of Kent 
together, and we can find no such place as you would 
palm upon us, sir; palm upon us, I say. Neither 
Magna nor Parva, as my son says, and he knows Latin, 
sir ; Latin. If you write my life true, sir, you must 
set down, that 1 } Joseph Munden, comedian, came into 
the world upon Allhallows Day, Anno Domini 1759 — 
1759 ; no sooner nor later, sir : and I saw the first 
light — the first light, remember, sir, at Stoke Pogis — 
Stoke Pogis, comitatu Bucks, and not at Lup — Lup 
Magna, which I believe to be no better than moonshine 
— moonshine ; do you mark me, sir ? I wonder you can 
put such flim-flams upon us, sir ; I do, I do. It does not 
become you, sir ; I say it, — I say it. And my father 
was an honest tradesman, sir : he dealt in malt and 
hops, sir; and was a corporation-man, sir; and of the 
Church of England, sir, and no Presbyterian ; nor Ana 
— Anabaptist, sir ; however you may be disposed to 
make honest people believe to the contrary, sir. Your 
bams are found out, sir. The town will be your stale 
puts no longer, sir ; and you must not send us jolly 
fellows, sir, — we that are comedians, sir, — you must 
not send us into groves and char — charnwoods a 
moping, sir. Neither charns, nor charnel-houses, sir. 
It is not our constitution, sir : I tell it you — I 
tell it you. I was a droll dog from my cradle. I 
came into the world tittering, and the midwife tittered, 
and the gossips spilt their caudle with tittering ; 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MR. MUNDEN. 93 



and, when I was brought to the font, the parson could 
not christen me for tittering. So I was never more 
than half baptized. And, when I was little Joey, I 
made 'em all titter ; there was not a melancholy face 
to be seen in Pogis. Pure nature, sir. I was bom a 
comedian. Old Screwup, the undertaker, could tell 
you, sir, if he were living. Why, I was obliged to be 
locked up every time there was to be a funeral at Pogis. 
I was — I was, sir. I used to grimace at the mutes, as 
he called it, and put 'em out with my mops and my 
mows, till they couldn't stand at a door for me. And 
when I was locked up, with nothing but a cat in my 
company, I followed my bent with trying to make her 
laugh ; and sometimes she would, and sometimes she 
would not. And my schoolmaster could make nothing 
of me : I had only to thrust my tongue in my cheek — 
in my cheek, sir, and the rod dropped from his fingers ; 
and so my education was limited, sir. And I grew up 
a young fellow, and it was thought convenient to enter 
me upon some course of life that should make me seri- 
ous : but it wouldn't do, sir. And I was articled to a 
dry-salter. My father gave forty pounds premium with 
me, sir. I can show the indent — dent — dentures, 
sir. But I was born to be a comedian, sir : so I ran 
away, and listed with the players, sir ; and I topt my 
parts at Amersham and Gerrard's Cross, and played 
my own father to his face, in his own town of Pogis, in 
the part of Gripe, when I was not full seventeen years 
of age ; and he did not know me again, but he knew 
me afterwards ; and then he laughed, and I laughed, 
and, what is better, the dry-salter laughed, and gave me 
up my articles for the joke's sake : so that I came into 



94 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MR. MUNDEN. 

court afterwards with clean hands — with clean hands — 
do you see, sir? 

[Here the manuscript becomes illegible for two or 
three sheets onwards, which we presume to be occa- 
sioned by the absence of Mr. Munden, jun. , who clearly 
transcribed it for the press thus far. The rest (with 
the exception of the concluding paragraph, which is 
seemingly resumed in the first handwriting) appears to 
contain a confused account of some lawsuit, in which 
the elder Munden was engaged ; with a circumstantial 
history of the proceedings or a case of breach of prom- 
ise of marriage, made to or by (we cannot pick out 
which) Jemima Munden, spinster ; probably the come- 
dian's cousin, for it does not appear he had any sister ; 
with a few dates, rather better preserved, of this great 
actor's engagements, — as " Cheltenham (spelt Chelt- 
nam), 1776;" "Bath, 1779;" "London, 1789;" 
together with stage anecdotes of Messrs. Edwin, Wil- 
son, Lee, Lewis, &c. ; over which we have strained our 
eyes to no purpose, in the hope of presenting some- 
thing amusing to the public. Towards the end, the 
manuscript brightens up a little, as we said, and con- 
cludes in the following manner.] 

stood before them for six and thirty years, 

[we suspect that Mr. Munden is here speaking of his 
final leave-taking of the stage] , and to be dismissed at 
last. But I was heart-whole to the last, sir. What 
though a few drops did course themselves down the old 
veteran's cheeks: who could help it, sir? I was a 
giant that night, sir ; and could have played fifty parts, 
each as arduous as Dozy. My faculties were never 



THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEFUNCT. 95 

better, sir. But I was to be laid upon the shelf. It 
did not suit the public to laugh with their old servant 
any longer, sir. [Here some moisture has blotted a 
sentence or two.] But I can play Polonius still, sir; 

I can, I can. 

Your servant, sir, 

Joseph Munden. 



THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEFUNCT* 

" Nought but a blank remains, a dead void space, 
A step of life that promised such a race." — Dkyden. 

Napoleon has now sent us back from the grave suf- 
ficient echoes of his living renown : the twilight of 
posthumous fame has lingered long enough over the 
spot where the sun of his glory set ; and his name must 
at length repose in the silence, if not in the darkness, of 
night. In this busy and evanescent scene, other spirits 
of the age are rapidly snatched away, claiming our 
undivided sympathies and regrets, until in turn they 
yield to some newer and more absorbing grief. An- 
other name is now added to the list of the mighty de- 
parted, — a name whose influence upon the hopes and 

* From the " New Monthly Magazine," 1825. 

Since writing this article, we have been informed that the object of 
our funeral oration is not definitively dead, but only moribund. So much 
the better : we shall have an opportunity of granting the request made to 
Walter by one of the children in the wood, and " kill him two times." The 
Abbe" de Vertot having a siege to write, and not receiving the materials in 
time, composed the whole from his invention. Shortly after its completion, 
the expected documents arrived, when he threw them aside, exclaiming, 
"You are of no use to me now: I have carried the town." 



96 THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEFUNCT. 

fears, the fates and fortunes, of our countrymen, has 
rivalled, and perhaps eclipsed, that of the defunct "child 
and champion of Jacobinism," while it is associated with 
all the sanctions of legitimate government, all the sacred 
authorities of social order and our most holy religion. 
We speak of one, indeed, under whose warrant heavy 
and incessant contributions were imposed upon our fel- 
low-citizens, but who exacted nothing without the signet 
and the sign-manual of most devout Chancellors of 
the Exchequer. Not to dally longer with the sympa- 
thies of our readers, we think it right to premonish 
them that we are composing an epicedium upon no less 
distinguished a personage than the Lottery, whose last 
breath, after many penultimate puffs, has been sobbed 
forth by sorrowing contractors, as if the world itself 
were about to be converted into a blank. There is a 
fashion of eulogy, as well as of vituperation ; and, 
though the Lottery stood for some time in the latter pre- 
dicament, we hesitate not to assert that multis Me bonis 
flebilis occidit. Never have we joined in the senseless 
clamor which condemned the only tax whereto we became 
voluntary contributors, — the only resource which gave 
the stimulus without the danger or infatuation of gam- 
bling ; the only alembic which in these plodding days 
sublimized our imaginations, and filled them with more 
delicious dreams than ever flitted athwart the senso- 
rium of Alnaschar. 

Never can the writer forget, when, as a child, he was 
hoisted upon a servant's shoulder in Guildhall, and 
looked down upon the installed and solemn pomp of the 
then drawing Lottery. The two awful cabinets of iron, 
upon whose massy and mysterious portals the royal 



THE ILLUSTKIOUS DEFUNCT. $ 

initials were gorgeously emblazoned, as if, after having 
deposited the unfulfilled prophecies within, the king 
himself had turned the lock, and still retained the key 
in his pocket; the blue-coat boy, with his naked arm, 
first converting the invisible wheel, and then diving into 
the dark recess for a ticket ; the grave and reverend 
faces of the commissioners eying the announced num- 
ber ; the scribes below calmly committing it to their 
huge books ; the anxious countenances of the surround- 
ing populace ; while the giant figures of Gog and Magog, 
like presiding deities, looked down with a grim silence 
upon the whole proceeding, — constituted altogether a 
scene, which, combined with the sudden wealth supposed 
to be lavished from those inscrutable wheels, was well 
calculated to impress the imagination of a boy with 
reverence and amazement. Jupiter, seated between 
the two fatal urns of good and evil, the blind goddess 
with her cornucopia, the Parcaa wielding the distaff, the 
thread of life, and the abhorred shears, seemed but dim 
and shadowy abstractions of mythology, when I had 
gazed upon an assemblage exercising, as I dreamt, a 
not less eventful power, and all presented to me in 
palpable and living operation. Reason and experience, 
ever at their old spiteful work of catching and destroy- 
ing the bubbles which youth delighted to follow, have 
indeed dissipated much of this illusion : but my mind so 
far retained the influence of that early impression, that 
I have ever since continued to deposit my humble offer- 
ings at its shrine, whenever the ministers of the Lottery 
went forth with type and trumpet to announce its peri- 
odical dispensations ; and though nothing has been doled 
out to me from its undiscerning coffers but blanks, or 

7 



% 



THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEFUNCT. 



those more vexatious tantalizers of the spirit, denomi- 
nated small prizes, yet do I hold myself largely indebt- 
ed to this most generous diffuser of universal happiness. 
Ingrates that we are ! are we to be thankful for no 
benefits that are not palpable to sense, to recognize no 
favors that are not of marketable value, to acknow- 
ledge no wealth unless it can be counted with the five 
fingers ? If we admit the mind to be the sole deposi- 
tory of genuine joy, where is the bosom that has not 
been elevated into a temporary Elysium by the magic of 
the Lottery? Which of us has not converted his ticket, 
or even his sixteenth share of one, into a nest-egg of 
Hope, upon which he has sate brooding in the secret 
roosting-places of his heart, and hatched it into a thou- 
sand fantastical apparitions ? 

What a startling revelation of the passions if all the 
aspirations engendered by the Lottery could be made 
manifest ! Many an impecuniary epicure has gloated 
over his locked-up warrant for future wealth, as a 
means of realizing the dream of his namesake in the 
"Alchemist:" — 

" My meat shall all come in in Indian shells, — 
Dishes of agate set in gold r and studded 
With emeralds, sapphires, hyacinths, and rubies; 
The tongues of carps, dormice, and camels' heels, 
Boiled i' the spirit of Sol, and dissolved in pearl, 
(Apicius' diet 'gainst the epilepsy.) 
And I will eat these broths with spoons of amber, 
Headed with diamant and carbuncle. 
My footboy shall eat pheasants, calvered salmons, 
Knots, godwits, lampreys : I myself will have 
The beards of barbels served, instead of salads; 
Oiled mushrooms, and the swelling unctuous paps 
Of a fat pregnant sow, newly cut off, 
Dressed with an exquisite and poignant sauce, 
For which I'll say unto my cook, ' There's gold : 
Go forth, and be a knight.' " 



THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEFUNCT. 99 

Many a doting lover has kissed the scrap of paper 
whose promissory shower of gold was to give up to him 
his otherwise unattainable Danae ; Mmrods have trans- 
formed the same narrow symbol into a saddle, by which 
they have been enabled to bestride the backs of peerless 
hunters ; while nymphs have metamorphosed its Protean 

form into — 

" Rings, gauds, conceits, 
Knacks, trifles, nosegays, sweetmeats," 

and all the braveries of dress, to say nothing of the 
obsequious husband, the two-footmaned carriage, and 
the opera-box. By the simple charm of this numbered 
and printed rag, gamesters have, for a time at least, 
recovered their losses ; spendthrifts have cleared off 
mortgages from their estates ; the imprisoned debtor has 
leapt over his lofty boundary of circumscription and 
restraint, and revelled in all the joys of liberty and 
fortune ; the cottage-walls have swelled out into more 
goodly proportion than those of Baucis and Philemon ; 
poverty has tasted the luxuries of competence ; labor has 
lolled at ease in a perpetual arm-chair of idleness ; sick- 
ness has been bribed into banishment ; life has been 
invested with new charms; and death deprived of its 
former terrors. Nor have the affections been less grat- 
ified than the wants, appetites, and ambitions of man- 
kind. By the conjurations of the same potent spell, 
kindred have lavished anticipated benefits upon one 
another, and charity upon all. Let it be termed a de- 
lusion, — a fool's paradise is better than the wise man's 
Tartarus ; be it branded as an ignis-fatuus, — it was at 
least a benevolent one, which, instead of beguiling its 
followers into swamps, caverns, and pitfalls, allured 



100 THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEFUNCT. 

them on with all the blandishments of enchantment to 
a garden of Eden, — an ever-blooming Elysium of 
delight. True, the pleasures it bestowed were evanes- 
cent : but which of our joys are permanent ? and who 
so inexperienced as not to know that anticipation is 
always of higher relish than reality, which strikes a bal- 
ance both in our sufferings and enjoyments ? " The fear 
of ill exceeds the ill we fear ; " and fruition, in the same 
proportion, invariably falls short of hope. w Men are 
but children of a larger growth," who may amuse them- 
selves for a long time in gazing at the reflection of the 
moon in the water; but, if they jump in to grasp it, 
they may grope for ever, and only get the farther from 
their object. He is the wisest who keeps feeding upon 
the future, and refrains as long as possible from unde- 
ceiving himself by converting his pleasant speculations 
into disagreeable certainties. 

The true mental epicure always purchased his ticket 
early, and postponed inquiry into its fate to the last 
possible moment, during the whole of which intervening 
period he had an imaginary twenty thousand locked up 
in his desk ; and was not this well worth all the money ? 
Who would scruple to give twenty pounds interest for 
even the ideal enjoyment of as many thousands during 
two or three months? Crede quod habes, et habes ; 
and the usufruct of such a capital is surely not dear at 
such a price. Some years ago, a gentleman in passing 
along Cheapside saw the figures 1,069, of which num- 
ber he was the sole proprietor, flaming on the window 
of a lottery-office as a capital prize. Somewhat flurried 
by this discovery, not less welcome than unexpected, 
he resolved to walk round St. Paul's that he might con- 



THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEFUNCT, 101 

sider in what way to communicate the happy tidings to 
his wife and family ; but, upon repassing the shop, he 
observed that the number was altered to 10,069, and, 
upon inquiry, had the mortification to learn that his 
ticket was a blank, and had only been stuck up in the 
window by a mistake of the clerk. This effectually 
calmed his agitation ; but he always speaks of himself 
as having once possessed twenty thousand pounds, and 
maintains that his ten-minutes' walk round St. Paul's 
was worth ten times the purchase-money of the ticket. 
A prize thus obtained, has, moreover, this special ad- 
vantage, — it is beyond the reach of fate; it cannot 
be squandered ; bankruptcy cannot lay siege to it ; 
friends cannot pull it down, nor enemies blow it up ; 
it bears a charmed life, and none of woman born can 
break its integrity, even by the dissipation of a single 
fraction. Show me the property in these perilous 
times that is equally compact and impregnable. We 
can no longer become enriched for a quarter of an 
hour ; we can no longer succeed in such splendid fail- 
ures : all our chances of making such a miss have 
vanished with the last of the Lotteries. 

Life will now become a flat, prosaic routine of mat- 
ter-of-fact ; and sleep itself, erst so prolific of numerical 
configurations and mysterious stimulants to lottery ad- 
venture, will be disfurnished of its figures and figments. 
People will cease to harp upon the one lucky number 
suggested in a dream, and which forms the exception, 
while they are scrupulously silent upon the ten thousand 
falsified dreams which constitute the rule. Morpheus 
will stifle Cocker with a handful of poppies, and our pil- 
lows will be no longer haunted by the book of numbers. 



102 THE ILLUSTKIOUS DEFUNCT. 

And who, too, shall maintain the art and mystery of 
puffing, in all its pristine glory, when the lottery pro- 
fessors shall have abandoned its cultivation? They 
were the first, as they will assuredly be the last, who 
fully developed the resources of that ingenious art ; who 
cajoled and decoyed the most suspicious and wary 
reader into a perusal of their advertisements by devices 
of endless variety and cunning ; who baited their lurk- 
ing schemes with midnight murders, ghost-stories, crim- 
cons, bon-mots, balloons, dreadful catastrophes, and 
every diversity of joy and sorrow, to catch newspaper- 
gudgeons.* Ought not such talents to be encouraged? 
Verily the abolitionists have much to answer for ! 

And now, having established the felicity of all those 
who gained imaginary prizes, let us proceed to show that 
the equally numerous class who were presented with 
real blanks have not less reason to consider themselves 
happy. Most of us have cause to be thankful for that 
which is bestowed ; but we have all, probably, reason 
to be still more grateful for that which is withheld, and 
more especially for our being denied the sudden posses- 
sion of riches. In the Litany, indeed, we call upon the 
Lord to deliver us " in all time of our wealth ; " but 
how few of us are sincere in deprecating such a cala- 

* " Of all the puffs," says Hazlitt, " lottery-puffs are the most ingenious." 
He thinks a collection of them would be an amusing vade-mecum. Byron, 
you know, was accused of writing lottery-puffs: and Lamb, in his younger 
days, to eke out " a something contracted income," essayed to write them ; but 
he did not succeed very well in the task. His samples were returned on his 
hands, as " done in too severe and terse a style." Some Grub-street hack 
— a nineteenth-century Tom Brown or Mr. Dash — succeeded in composing 
these popular and ingenious productions; but the man who wrote the Essays 
of Elia could not write a successful lottery-puff! At this, exult, medi- 
ocrity ! and take courage, man of genius ! — Editor. 



THE ILLUSTRIOUS DEFUNCT. 103 

mity ! Massinger's Luke, and Ben Jonson's Sir Epicure 
Mammon, and Pope's Sir Balaam, and our own daily 
observation, might convince us that the Devil "now 
tempts by making rich, not making poor." We may 
read in the " Guardian " a circumstantial account of a 
man who was utterly ruined by gaining a capital prize ; 
we may recollect what Dr. Johnson said to Grarrick, 
when the latter was making a display of his wealth at 
Hampton Court, — "Ah, David, David! these are the 
things that make a death-bed terrible ; " we may re- 
call the Scripture declaration, as to the difficulty a rich 
man finds in entering into the kingdom of Heaven ; 
and, combining all these denunciations against opulence, 
let us heartily congratulate one another upon our lucky 
escape from the calamity of a twenty or thirty thousand 
pound prize ! The fox in the fable, who accused the un- 
attainable grapes of sourness, was more of a philosopher 
than we are generally willing to allow. He was an adept 
in that species of moral alchemy which turns every 
thing to gold, and converts disappointment itself into a 
ground of resignation and content. Such we have 
shown to be the great lesson inculcated by the Lottery, 
when rightly contemplated ; and, if we might parody 
M. de Chateaubriand's jingling expression, — " le Roi est 
mort : vive le Roi ! " — we should be tempted to exclaim, 
" The Lottery is no more : long live the Lottery ! " 



104 THE RELIGION OF ACTORS. 



THE RELIGION OF ACTORS* 

The world has hitherto so little troubled its head with 
the points of doctrine held by a community which 
contributes in other ways so largely to its amusement, 
that, before the late mischance of a celebrated tragic 
actor, it scarce condescended to look into the practice 
of any individual player, much less to inquire into the 
hidden and abscondite springs of his actions. Indeed, 
it is with some violence to the imagination that we con- 
ceive of an actor as belonging to the relations of private 
life, so closely do we identify these persons in our mind 
with the characters which they assume upon the stage. 
How oddly does it sound, when we are told that the late 
Miss Pope, for instance, — that is to say, in our notion 
of her, Mrs. Candor, — was a good daughter, an affec- 
tionate sister, and exemplary in all the parts of domestic 
life ! With still greater difficulty can we carry our no- 
tions to church, and conceive of Liston kneeling upon 
a hassock, or Munden uttering a pious ejaculation, — 
"making mouths at the invisible event." But the times 
are fast improving ; and, if the process of sanctity begun 
under the happy auspices of the present licenser go on 

* From the " New Monthly Magazine," 1826. 

Writing to Bernard Barton in the spring of 1826, Lamh says, speaking 
of his literary projects, "A little thing without name will also be printed 
on the ' Religion of the Actors: ' but it is out of your way; so I recommend 
you, with true author's hypocrisy, to skip it." I wonder if "good B. B." 
read the article; and, if he did, how he liked it. Quaker though he was, he 
could not but have been pleased with it. — Editor. 



THE RELIGION OF ACTORS. 105 

to its completion, it will be as necessary for a comedian 
to give an account of his faith as of his conduct. Faw- 
cett must study the five points ; and Dicky Suett, if he 
were alive, would have had to rub up his catechism. 
Already the effects of it begin to appear. A celebrated 
performer has thought fit to oblige the world with a 

confession of his faith, — or Br 's "Peligio Drama- 

tici." This gentleman, in his laudable attempt to shift 
from his person the obloquy of Judaism, with the for- 
wardness of a new convert, in trying to prove too 
much, has, in the opinion of many, proved too little. 
A simple declaration of his Christianity was sufficient ; 
but, strange to say, his apology has not a word about 
it. We are left to gather it from some expressions 
which imply that he is a Protestant ; but we did not 
wish to inquire into the niceties of his orthodoxy. To 
his friends of the old persuasion, the distinction was im- 
pertinent ; for what cares Rabbi Ben Kimchi for the 
differences which have split our novelty ? To the great 
body of Christians that hold the pope's supremacy — 
that is to say, to the major part of the Christian world — 
his religion will appear as much to seek as ever. But 
perhaps he conceived that all Christians are Protestants, 
as children and the common people call all, that are not 
animals, Christians. The mistake was not very con- 
siderable in so young a proselyte, or he might think 
the general (as logicians speak) involved in the par- 
ticular. All Protestants are Christians ; but I am a 
Protestant ; ergo, &c. : as if a marmoset, contending 
to be a man, overleaping that term as too generic and 
vulgar, should at once roundly proclaim himself to be a 
gentleman. The argument would be, as we say, ex 



106 THE RELIGION OF ACTORS. 

abundanti. From whichever cause this excessus in termi- 
nis proceeded, we can do no less than congratulate the 
general state of Christendom upon the accession of so 
extraordinary a convert. Who was the happy instru- 
ment of the conversion, we are yet to learn : it conies 
nearest to the attempt of the late pious Dr. Watts to 
Christianize the Psalms of the Old Testament. Some- 
thing of the old Hebrew raciness is lost in the trans- 
fusion ; but much of its asperity is softened and pared 
down in the adaptation. 

The appearance of so singular a treatise at this con- 
juncture has set us upon an inquiry into the present 
state of religion upon the stage generally. By the 
favor of the church-wardens of St. Martin's in the 
Fields, and St. Paul's, Co vent Garden, who have very 
readily, and with great kindness, assisted our pur- 
suit, we are enabled to lay before the public the follow- 
ing particulars. Strictly speaking, neither of the two 
great bodies is collectively a religious institution. We 
had expected to have found a chaplain among them, 
as at St. Stephen's and other court establishments ; 
and were the more surprised at the omission, as the last 
Mr. Bengough at the one house, and Mr. Powell at 
the other, from a gravity of speech and demeanor, and 
the habit of wearing black at their first appearances 
in the beginning of fifth or the conclusion of fourth acts, 
so eminently pointed out their qualifications for such 
office. These corporations, then, being not properly 
congregational, we must seek the solution of our ques- 
tion in the tastes, attainments, accidental breeding, and 
education of the individual members of them. As we 
were prepared to expect, a majority at both houses ad- 



THE RELIGION OF ACTORS. 107 

here to the religion of the Church Established, — only 
that at one of them a pretty strong leaven of Catholicism 
is suspected ; which, considering the notorious educa- 
tion of the manager at a foreign seminary, is not so 
much to be wondered at. Some have gone so far as 

to report that Mr. T y, in particular, belongs to an 

order lately restored on the Continent. We can con- 
tradict this : that gentleman is a member of the Kirk 
of Scotland ; and his name is to be found, much to his 
honor, in the list of seceders from the congregation of 
Mr. Fletcher. While the generality, as we have said, 
are content to jog on in the safe trammels of national 
orthodoxy, symptoms of a sectarian spirit have broken 
out in quarters where we should least have looked for it. 
Some of the ladies at both houses are deep in contro- 
verted points. Miss F e, we are credibly informed, 

is a Sub- and Madame V a Supra- Lapsarian. Mr. 

Pope is the last of the exploded sect of the Ranters. 
Mr. Sinclair has joined the Shakers. Mr. Grimal- 
di, sen., after being long a Jumper, has lately fallen 
into some whimsical theories respecting the fall of 
man ; which he understands, not of an allegorical, but 
a real tumble, by which the whole body of humanity 
became, as it were, lame to the performance of good 
works. Pride he will have to be nothing but a stiff 
neck ; irresolution, the nerves shaken ; an inclination 
to sinister paths, crookedness of the joints; spiritual 
deadness, a paralysis ; want of charity, a contraction 
in the fingers ; despising of government, a broken head ; 
the plaster, a sermon ; the lint to bind it up, the text ; 
the probers, the preachers ; a pair of crutches, the old 
and new law ; a bandage, religious obligation : a fanci- 



108 THE ASS. 

ful mode of illustration, derived from the accidents and 
habits of his past calling spiritualized, rather than from 
any accurate acquaintance with the Hebrew text, in 
which report speaks him but a raw scholar. Mr. Ellis- 
ton, from all that we can learn, has his religion yet to 
choose ; though some think him a Muggletonian. 



THE ASS. 5 * 

Mr. Collier, in his "Poetical Decameron" (Third 
Conversation), notices a tract printed in 1595, with 
the author's initials only, A. B., entitled "The Noble- 
nesse of the Asse ; a work rare, learned, and excellent." 
He has selected the following pretty passage from it : 
" He (the ass) refuseth no burden : he goes whither he 
is sent, without any contradiction. He lifts not his foote 
against any one ; he bytes not ; he is no fugitive, nor 
malicious affected. He doth all things in good sort, and 
to his liking that hath cause to employ him. If strokes 
be given him, he cares not for them ; and, as our modern 
poet singeth, — 

' Thou wouldst (perhaps) he should become thy foe, 
And to that end dost beat him many times : 
He cares not for himselfe, much less thy blow.' " f 

Certainly Nature, foreseeing the cruel usage which 
this useful servant to man should receive at man's hand, 

* From Hone's " Every-day Book." 

t " Who this modern poet was," says Mr. Collier, " is a secret worth dis- 
covering." The wood-cut on the title of the pamphlet is — an ass, with a 
wreath of laurel round his neck. 



THE ASS. 109 

did prudently in furnishing Mm with a tegument imper- 
vious to ordinary stripes. The malice of a child or a 
weak hand can make feeble impressions on him. His 
back offers no mark to a puny foeman. To a common 
whip or switch his hide presents an absolute insensibil- 
ity. You might as well pretend to scourge a schoolboy 
with a tough pair of leather breeches on. His jerkin is 
well fortified; and therefore the costermongers, "be- 
tween the years 1790 and 1800," did more politicly than 
piously in lifting up a part of his upper garment. 1 
well remember that beastly and bloody custom. I have 
often longed to see one of those refiners in discipline 
himself at the cart's tail, with just such a convenient 
spot laid bare to the tender mercies of the whipster. 
But, since Nature has resumed her rights, it is to be 
hoped that this patient creature does not suffer to ex- 
tremities ; and that, to the savages who still belabor his 
poor carcass with their blows (considering the sort of 
anvil they are laid upon) , he might in some sort, if he 
could speak, exclaim with the philosopher, "Lay on : 
you beat but upon the case of Anaxarchus." 

Contemplating this natural safe-guard, this fortified 
exterior, it is with pain I view the sleek, foppish, 
combed, and curried person of this animal as he is dis- 
naturalized at watering-places, &c. 3 where they affect 
to make a palfrey of him. Fie on all such sophistica- 
tions ! It will never do, master groom. SomethiDo- 
of his honest, shaggy exterior will still peep up in spite 
of you, — his good, rough, native, pine-apple coating. 
You cannot "refine a scorpion into a fish, though you 
rinse it and scour it with ever so cleanly cookery."* 

* Milton, from memory. 



110 THE ASS. 

The modern poet quoted by A. B. proceeds to cele- 
brate a virtue for which no one to this day had been 
aware that the ass was remarkable : — 

" One other gift this beast hath as his owne, 
Wherewith the rest could not he furnished; 
On man himself the same was not bestowne : 
To wit, on him is ne'er engendered 
The hateful vermine that doth teare the skin, 
And to the bode [body] doth make his passage in." 

And truly, when one thinks on the suit of impenetra- 
ble armor with which Nature (like Yulcan to another 
Achilles) has provided him, these subtile enemies to 
our repose would have shown some dexterity in getting 
into his quarters. As the bogs of Ireland by tradition 
expel toads and reptiles, he may well defy these small 
deer in his fastnesses. It seems the latter had not 
arrived at the exquisite policy adopted by the human 
vermin "between 1790 and 1800." 

But the most singular and delightful gift of the ass, 
according to the writer of this pamphlet, is his voice, the 
" goodly, sweet, and continual brayings " of which, 
" whereof they forme a melodious and proportionable 
kinde of musicke," seem to have affected him with no 
ordinary pleasure. "Nor thinke I," he adds, "that 
any of our immoderate musitians can deny but that 
their song is full of exceeding pleasure to be heard ; 
because therein is to be discerned both concord, dis- 
cord, singing in the meane, the beginning to sing in 
large compasse, then following into rise and fall, the 
halfe-note, whole note, musicke of five voices, firme 
singing by four voices, three together, or one voice 
and a halfe. Then their variable contrarieties amongst 



THE ASS. Ill 

them, when one delivers forth a long tenor or a short, 
the pausing for time, breathing in measure, breaking 
the minim or very least moment of time. Last of all, 
to heare the musicke of five or six voices chaunged to 
so many of asses is amongst them to heare a song of 
world without end." 

There is no accounting for ears, or for that laudable 
enthusiasm with which an author is tempted to invest a 
favorite subject with the most incompatible perfections : 
I should otherwise, for my own taste, have been inclined 
rather to have given a place to these extraordinary mu- 
sicians at that banquet of nothing-less-than-sweet-sounds, 
imagined by old Jeremy Collier (Essays, 1698, part ii. 
on Music) , where, after describing the inspirating effects 
of martial music in a battle, he hazards an ingenious 
conjecture, whether a sort of anti-music might not be 
invented, which should have quite the contrary effect of 
"sinking the spirits, shaking the nerves, curdling the 
blood, and inspiring despair and cowardice and con- 
sternation. 'Tis probable," he says, "the roaring of 
lions, the warbling of cats and screech-owls, together 
with a mixture of the howling of dogs, judiciously imi- 
tated and compounded, might go a great way in this 
invention." The dose, we confess, is pretty potent, and 
skilfully enough prepared. But what shall we say to 
the Ass of Silenus, who, if we may trust to classic lore, 
by his own proper sounds, without thanks to cat or 
screech-owl, dismayed and put to rout a whole army 
of giants ? Here was anti-music with a vengeance ; 
a whole Tan-Dis-Harmonicon in a single lungs of 
leather ! 

But I keep you trifling too long on this asinine sub- 



112 IN RE SQUIRRELS. 

ject. I have already passed the Pons Asinorum, and 
will desist, remembering the old pedantic pun of Jem 
Boyer, my schoolmaster : — 

"Ass in prasenti seldom makes a wise man in 
futuro." 



IN RE SQUIRRELS* 

What is gone with the cages with the climbing squir- 
rel, and bells to them, which were formerly the indis- 
pensable appendage to the outside of a tinman's shop, 
and were, in fact, the only live signs ? One, we believe, 
still hangs out on Holborn ; but they are fast vanishing 
with the good old modes of our ancestors. f They seem 
to have been superseded by that still more ingenious re- 
finement of modern humanity, — the tread-mill; in which 

* From Hone's "Every-day Book." 

f Lamb not only had a passionate fondness for old books and — 
" The old familiar faces," 
but he loved the old associations. He was no admirer of your modern im- 
provements. Unlike Dr. Johnson, he did not go into the "most stately 
shops," but purchased his books and engravings at the stalls and from 
second-hand dealers. In his eyes, the old Inner-Temple Church was a hand- 
somer and statelier structure than the finest cathedral in England ; and to his 
ear, as well as to the ear of Will Honeycomb, the old familiar cries of the 
peripatetic London merchants were more musical than the songs of larks and 
nightingales. It grieved him sorely to see an old building demolished which 
he had passed and repassed for years, in his daily walks to and from his busi- 
ness; or an old custom abolished whose observance he had witnessed when 
a child. " The disappearance of the old clock from St. Dunstan's Church," 
says Moxon in his pleasant tribute to Lamb's memory in Leigh Hunt's Jour- 
nal, " drew tears from his eyes ; nor could he ever pass without emotion the 
place where Exeter 'Change once stood. The removal had spoiled a reality in 
Gay. ' The passer-by,' he said, ' no longer saw the combs dangle in his 
face.' This almost broke his heart." — Editor. 



IN KE SQUIRRELS. 113 

human squirrels still perform a similar round of ceaseless, 
improgressive clambering, which must be nuts to them. 
We almost doubt the fact of the teeth of this creature 
being so purely orange-colored as Mr. Urban's corre- 
spondent gives out. One of our old poets — and they 
were pretty sharp observers of Nature — describes them 
as brown. But perhaps the naturalist referred to meant 
" of the color of a Maltese orange," * which is rather 
more obfuscated than your fruit of Seville or St. Mi- 
chael's, and may help to reconcile the difference. We 
cannot speak from observation ; but we remember at 
school getting our fingers into the orangery of one of 
these little gentry (not having a due caution of the traps 
set there), and the result proved sourer than lemons. 
The author of the "Task" somewhere speaks of their 
anger as being " insignificantly fierce ; " but we found the 
demonstration of it on this occasion quite as significant 
as we desired, and have not been disposed since to look 
any of these " gift horses " in the mouth. Maiden aunts 
keep these " small deer," as they do parrots, to bite peo- 
ple's fingers, on purpose to give them good advice "not 
to adventure so near the cage another time." As for 
their " six quavers divided into three quavers and a dotted 
crotchet," I suppose they may go into Jeremy Bentham's 
next budget of fallacies, along with the "melodious and 
proportionable kinde of musicke" recorded, in your last 
number, of an highly gifted animal. 

* Fletcher in the " Faithful Shepherdess." The satyr offers to Clorin — 

" Grapes whose lusty blood 
Is the learned poet's good, — 
Sweeter yet did never crown 
The head of Bacchus ; nuts more brown 
Than the squirrels' teeth that crack them." 



114 BE FOE'S SECONDARY NOVELS. 



ESTIMATE OF DE FOE'S SECONDARY 
NOVELS* 

It has happened not seldom that one work of some 
author has so transcendently surpassed in execution the 
rest of his compositions, that the world has agreed to 
pass a sentence of dismissal upon the latter, and to con- 
sign them to total neglect and oblivion. It has done 
wisely in this not to suffer the contemplation of excel- 
lences of a lower standard to abate or stand in the way 
of the pleasure it has agreed to receive from the master- 
piece. 

Again : it has happened, that from no inferior merit 
of execution in the rest, but from superior good fortune 
in the choice of its subject, some single work shall have 
been suffered to eclipse, and cast into shade, the deserts 
of its less fortunate brethren. This has been done with 
more or less injustice in the case of the popular allegory 
of Bunyan, in which the beautiful and scriptural image 
of a pilgrim or wayfarer (we are all such upon earth) , 
addressing itself intelligibly and feelingly to the bosoms 
of all, has silenced, and made almost to be forgotten, the 
more awful and scarcely less tender beauties of the " Holy 
War made by Shaddai upon Diabolus," of the same 
author, — a romance less happy in its subject, but surely 
well worthy of a secondary immortality. But in no in- 
stance has this excluding partiality been exerted with 
more unfairness than against what may be termed the 
secondary novels or romances of De Foe. 

* From Walter Wilson's Life of De Foe. 



DE FOE'S SECONDARY NOVELS. 115 

While all ages and descriptions of people hang de- 
lighted over the "Adventures of Robinson Crusoe," and 
shall continue to do so, we trust, while the world lasts, 
how few comparatively will bear to be told that there 
exist other fictitious naratives by the same writer, — 
four of them at least of no inferior interest, except what 
results from a less felicitous choice of situation ! " Rox- 
ana," " Singleton," " Moll Flanders," " Colonel Jack," 
are all genuine offspring of the same father. They bear 
the veritable impress of De Foe. An unpractised mid- 
wife that would not swear to the nose, lip, forehead, and 
eye of every one of them ! They are, in their way, as 
full of incident, and some of them every bit as romantic ; 
only they want the uninhabited island, and the charm 
that has bewitched the world, of the striking solitary 
situation. 

But are there no solitudes out of the cave and the 
desert ? or cannot the heart in the midst of crowds feel 
frightfully alone? Singleton on the world of waters, 
prowling about with pirates less merciful than the crea- 
tures of any howling wilderness, — is he not alone, 
with the faces of men about him, but without a guide 
that can conduct him through the mists of educational 
and habitual ignorance, or a fellow-heart that can inter- 
pret to him the new-born yearnings and aspirations of 
unpractised penitence ? Or when the boy Colonel Jack, 
in the loneliness of the heart (the worst solitude), 
goes to hide his ill-purchased treasure in the hollow 
tree by night, and miraculously loses, and miraculously 
finds it again, — whom hath he there to sympathize 
with him? or of what sort are his associates? 

The narrative manner of De Foe has a naturalness 



116 DE FOE'S SECONDARY NOVELS. 

about it beyond that of any other novel or romance 
writer. His fictions have all the air of true stories. 
It is impossible to believe, while you are reading them, 
that a real person is not narrating to you everywhere 
nothing but what really happened to himself. To this 
the extreme homeliness of their style mainly contributes. 
We use the word in its best and heartiest sense, — that 
which comes home to the reader. The narrators every- 
where are chosen from low life, or have had their origin 
in it : therefore they tell their own tales (Mr. Coleridge 
has anticipated us in this remark) , as persons in their 
degree are observed to do, with infinite repetition, and 
an overacted exactness, lest the hearer should not have 
minded, or have forgotten, some things that had been 
told before. Hence the emphatic sentences marked in 
the good old (but deserted) Italic type ; and hence, 
too, the frequent interposition of the reminding old 
colloquial parenthesis, "I say," "Mind," and the like, 
when the story-teller repeats what, to a practised 
reader, might appear to have been sufficiently insisted 
upon before : which made an ingenious critic observe, 
that his works, in this kind, were excellent reading for 
the kitchen. And, in truth, the heroes and heroines of 
De Foe can never again hope to be popular with a much 
higher class of readers than that of the servant-maid 
or the sailor. Crusoe keeps its rank only by tough 
prescription. Singleton, the pirate ; Colonel Jack, the 
thief; Moll Flanders, both thief and harlot; Roxa- 
na, harlot and something worse, — would be startling 
ingredients in the bill-of-fare of modern literary delica- 
cies. But, then, what pirates, what thieves, and what 
harlots, is the thief, the harlot, and the pirate of De Foe ! 



POSTSCRIPT TO THE "CHAPTER ON EARS." 117 

We would not hesitate to say, that in no other book of 
fiction, where the lives of such characters are described, 
is guilt and delinquency made less seductive, or the suf- 
fering made more closely to follow the commission, or 
the penitence more earnest or more bleeding, or the in- 
tervening flashes of religious visitation upon the rude 
and uninstructed soul more meltingly and fearfully paint- 
ed. They, in this, come near to the tenderness of Bun- 
yan ; while the livelier pictures and incidents in them, 
as in Hogarth or in Fielding, tend to diminish that fas- 
tidiousness to the concerns and pursuits of common life 
which an unrestrained passion for the ideal and the 
sentimental is in danger of producing. 



POSTSCRIPT TO THE "CHAPTER ON EARS."* 

A writer, whose real name, it seems, is Boldero, but 
who has been entertaining the town for the last twelve 
months with some very pleasant lucubrations under the 
assumed signature of Leigh Hunt,] in his "Indicator" 
of the 31st January last has thought fit to insinuate 
that I, Elia, do not write the little sketches which bear 
my signature in this magazine, but that the true author 
of them is a Mr. L b. Observe the critical period 



* From the " London Magazine," 1821. 

f Clearly a fictitious appellation ; for, if we admit the latter of these 
names to be in a manner English, what is Leigh 1 Christian nomenclature 
knows no such. 



118 POSTSCRIPT TO THE "CHAPTER OF EARS." 

at which he has chosen to impute the calumny, — on 
the very eve of the publication of our last number, — 
affording no scope for explanation for a full month ; 
during which time I must needs lie writhing and tOSS- 
ing under the cruel imputation of nonentity. Good 
Heavens ! that a plain man must not be allowed to be — 

They call this an age of personality ; but surely 
this spirit of anti-personality (if I may so express it) 
is something worse. 

Take away my moral reputation, — I may live to 
discredit that calumny ; injure my literary fame, — I 
may write that up again : but, when a gentleman is 
robbed of his identity, where is he? 

Other murderers stab but at our existence, a frail 
and perishing trifle at the best : but here is an assassin 
who aims at our very essence ; who not only forbids 
us to be any longer, but to have been at all. Let our 
ancestors look to it. 

Is the parish register nothing? Is the house in 
Princes Street, Cavendish Square, where we saw the 
light six and forty years ago, nothing? Were our pro- 
genitors from stately Genoa, where we flourished four 
centuries back, before the barbarous name of Boldero* 
was known to a European mouth, nothing? Was the 
goodly scion of our name, transplanted into England 
in the reign of the seventh Henry, nothing? Are the 
archives of the steelyard, in succeeding reigns (if 
haply they survive the fury of our envious enemies), 
showing that we flourished in prime repute, as mer- 
chants, down to the period of the Commonwealth, 
nothing ? 

* It is clearly of transatlantic origin. 



ELIA TO HIS CORRESPONDENTS. 119 

" Why, then the world, and all that's in't, is nothing; 
The covering sky is nothing ; Bohemia nothing." 

I am ashamed that this trifling writer should have 
power to move me so. 



ELIA TO HIS CORRESPONDENTS.* 

A correspondent, who writes himself Peter Ball, 
or Bell, — for his handwriting is as ragged as his man- 
ners, — admonishes me of the old saying, that some 
people (under a courteous periphrasis, I slur his less 
ceremonious epithet) had need have good memories. 
In my " Old Benchers of the Inner Temple," I have 
delivered myself, and truly, a templar born. Bell 
clamors upon this, and thinketh that he hath caught a 
fox. It seems that in a former paper, retorting upon 
a weekly scribbler who had called my good identity in 
question (see Postscript to my " Chapter on Ears ") , I 
profess myself a native of some spot near Cavendish 
Square, deducing my remoter origin from Italy. But 
who does not see, except this tinkling cymbal, that, in 
that idle fiction of Genoese ancestry, I was answering a 
fool according to his folly, — that Elia there expresseth 
himself ironically as to an approved slanderer, who 
hath no right to the truth, and can be no fit recipient 
of it? Such a one it is usual to leave to his delu- 
sions ; or, leading him from error still to contradic- 
tory error, to plunge him (as we say) deeper in the 

* From the " London Magazine," 1821. 



120 ELIA TO HIS CORRESPONDENTS. 

mire, and give him line till he suspend himself. No 
understanding reader could be imposed upon by such 
obvious rodomontade to suspect me for an alien, or be- 
lieve me other than English. 

To a second correspondent, who signs himself "A 
Wiltshire Man," and claims me for a countryman upon 
the strength of an equivocal phrase in my "Christ's Hos- 
pital," a more mannerly reply is due. Passing over the 
Genoese fable, which Bell makes such a ring about, he 
nicely detects a more subtle discrepancy, which Bell 
was too obtuse to strike upon. Referring to the pas- 
sage, I must confess, that the term "native town," 
applied to Calne, prima facie seems to bear out the 
construction which my friendly correspondent is willing 
to put upon it. The context too, I am afraid, a little 
favors it. But where the words of an author, taken 
literally, compared with some other passage in his writ- 
ings, admitted to be authentic, involve a palpable con- 
tradiction, it hath been the custom of the ingenuous 
commentator to smooth the difficulty by the supposition 
that in the one case an allegorical or tropical sense was 
chiefly intended. So, by the word " native," I may be 
supposed to mean a town where I might have been 
born, or where it might be desirable that I should 
have been born, as being situate in wholesome air, upon 
a dry, chalky soil, in which I delight ; or a town 
with the inhabitants of which I passed some weeks, a 
summer or two ago, so agreeably, that they and it 
became in a manner native to me. Without some such 
latitude of interpretation in the present case, I see not 
how we can avoid falling into a gross error in physics, 
as to conceive that a gentleman may be born in two 



ELIA TO HIS CORRESPONDENTS. 121 

places, from which all modern and ancient testimony is 
alike abhorrent. Bacchus cometh the nearest to it, 
whom I remember Ovid to have honored with the epi- 
thet " twice born." * But, not to mention that he is so 
called (we conceive) in reference to the places whence 
rather than the places where he was delivered, — for, by 
either birth, he may probably be challenged for a 
Theban, — in a strict way of speaking, he was a films 
fcmoris by no means in the same sense as he had been 
before a films aim ; for that latter was but a secondary 
and tralatitious way of being born, and he but a denizen 
of the second house of his geniture. Thus much by 
way of explanation was thought due to the courteous 
" Wiltshire Man." 

To "Indagator," "Investigator," "Incertus," and the 
rest of the pack, that are so importunate about the true 
localities of his birth, — as if, forsooth, Elia were pres- 
ently about to be passed to his parish, — to all such 
church- warden critics he answereth, that, any explana- 
tion here siven notwithstanding, he hath not so fixed 
his nativity (like a rusty vane) to one dull spot, but 
that, if he seeth occasion, or the argument shall demand 
it, he will be born again, in future papers, in what- 
ever place, and at whatever period, shall seem good 
unto him. 

"Modo me Thebis, modo Athenis." 



Imperfectus adhnc infans genetricis abalvo 
Eripitur, patrioque tener (si credere dignum) 
Insuitur femori. . . . 
Tutaque bis geniti sunt incunabula Bacchi." 

Metamorph., lib. iii. 



122 UNITARIAN PEOTESTS. 



UNITARIAN PROTESTS;* 

IN A LETTER TO A FRIEND OF THAT PERSUASION NEWLY 
MARRIED. 

Dear M , — Though none of your acquaintance 

can with greater sincerity congratulate you upon this 
happy conjuncture than myself, one of the oldest of 
them, it was with pain I found you, after the ceremony, 
depositing in the vestry-room what is called a Protest. 
I thought you superior to this little sophistry. What ! 
after submitting to the service of the Church of Eng- 
land ; after consenting to receive a boon from her, in 
the person of your amiable consort, — was it consistent 
with sense, or common good manners, to turn round 
upon her, and flatly taunt her with false worship ? This 
language is a little of the strongest in your books and 
from your pulpits, though there it may well enough be 
excused from religious zeal and the native warmth of 
nonconformity. But at the altar, — the Church-of- 
England altar, — adopting her forms, and complying 
with her requisitions to the letter, — to be consistent, 
together with the practice, I fear, you must drop the 
language of dissent. You are no longer sturdy non- 
cons : you are there occasional conformists. You sub- 
mit to accept the privileges communicated by a form of 
words, exceptionable, and perhaps justly, in your view ; 
but, so submitting, you have no right to quarrel with the 

* From the " London Magazine," 1825. 



UNITARIAN PROTESTS. 123 

ritual which you have just condescended to owe an obli- 
gation to. They do not force you into their churches. 
You come voluntarily, knowing the terms. You 
marry in the name of the Trinity. There is no evad- 
ing this by pretending that you take the formula with 
your own interpretation : (and, so long as you can 
do this, where is the necessity of protesting?) for the 
meaning of a vow is to be settled by the sense of 
the imposer, not by any forced construction of the 
taker ; else might all vows, and oaths too, be eluded 
with impunity. You marry, then, essentially as Trini- 
tarians ; and the altar no sooner satisfied than, hey, 
presto ! with the celerity of a juggler, you shift habits, 
and proceed pure Unitarians again in the vestry. You 
cheat the church out of a wife, and go home smiling in 
your sleeves that you have so cunningly despoiled the 
Egyptians. In plain English, the Church has married 
you in the name of so and so, assuming that you took 
the words in her sense : but you outwitted her ; you 
assented to them in your sense only, and took from her 
what, upon a right understanding, she would have 
declined giving you. 

This is the fair construction to be put upon all 
Unitarian marriages, as at present contracted; and, so 
long as you Unitarians could salve your consciences 
with the equivoque, I do not see why the Established 
Church should have troubled herself at all about the 
matter. But the protesters necessarily see further. 
They have some glimmerings of the deception ; they 
apprehend a flaw somewhere ; they would fain be hon- 
est, and yet they must marry notwithstanding ; for 
honesty's sake, they are fain to dehonestate themselves 



124 UNITARIAN PROTESTS. 

a little. Let me try the very words of your own 
protest, to see what confessions we can pick out of 
them. 

" As Unitarians, therefore, we " (you and your newly 
espoused bride) " most solemnly protest against the ser- 
vice " (which yourselves have just demanded) , " because 
we are thereby called upon not only tacitly to acqui- 
esce, but to profess a belief, in a doctrine which is a 
dogma, as we believe, totally unfounded." But do you 
profess that belief during the ceremony? or are you 
only called upon for the profession, but do not make 
it ? If the latter, then you fall in with the rest of your 
more consistent brethren who waive the protest ; if the 
former, then, I fear, your protest cannot save you. 

Hard and grievous it is, that, in any case, an insti- 
tution so broad and general as the union of man and 
wife should be so cramped and straitened by the 
hands of an imposing hierarchy, that, to plight troth to 
a lovely woman, a man must be necessitated to com- 
promise his truth and faith to Heaven ; but so it must 
be, so long as you choose to marry by the forms of the 
church over which that hierarchy presides. 

" Therefore/' say you, " we protest." Oh poor and 
much fallen word, Protest ! It was not so that the first 
heroic reformers protested. They departed out of Ba- 
bylon once for good and all ; they came not back for 
an occasional contact with her altars, — a dallying, and 
then a protesting against dalliance ; they stood not 
shuffling in the porch, with a Popish foot within, and 
its lame Lutheran fellow without, halting betwixt. 
These were the true Protestants. You are — pro- 
testers. 



UNITARIAN PROTESTS. 125 

Besides the inconsistency of this proceeding, I must 
think it a piece of impertinence, unseasonable at least,, 
and out of place, to obtrude these papers upon the 
officiating clergyman ; to offer to a public functionary 
an instrument which by the tenor of his function he is 
not obliged to accept, but rather he is called upon to 
reject. Is it done in his clerical capacity? He has 
no power of redressing the grievance. It is to take 
the benefit of his ministry, and then insult him. If 
in his capacity of fellow - Christian only, what are 
your scruples to him, so long as you yourselves are 
able to get over them, and do get over them by the 
very fact of coming to require his services ? The thing 
you call a Protest might with just as good a reason be 
presented to the church-warden for the time being, to 
the parish-clerk, or the pew-opener. 

The Parliament alone can redress your grievance, 
if any. Yet I see not how with any grace your people 
can petition for relief, so long as, by the very fact of 
your coming to church to be married, they do bond fide 
and strictly relieve themselves. The Upper House, in 
particular, is not unused to these same things, called 
Protests, among themselves. But how would this 
honorable body stare to find a noble lord conceding a 
measure, and in the next breath, by a solemn protest, 
disowning it ! A protest there is a reason given for 
non-compliance, not a subterfuge for an equivocal occa- 
sional compliance. It was reasonable in the primitive 
Christians to avert from their persons, by whatever 
lawful means, the compulsory eating of meats winch 
had been offered unto idols. I dare say, the Roman 
prefects and exarchates had plenty of petitioning in their 



126 UNITARIAN PROTESTS. 

days. But what would a Festus or Agrippa have 
replied to a petition to that effect, presented to him 
by some evasive Laodicean, with the very meat between 
his teeth, which he had been chewing voluntarily, ra- 
ther than abide the penalty ? Kelief for tender con- 
sciences means nothing, where the conscience has 
previously relieved itself; that is, has complied with the 
injunctions which it seeks preposterously to be rid of. 
Kelief for conscience there is properly none, but what 
by better information makes an act appear innocent 
and lawful with which the previous conscience was not 
satisfied to comply. All else is but relief from penal- 
ties, from scandal incurred by a complying practice, 
where the conscience itself is not fully satisfied. 

" But," say you, " we have hard measure : the Qua- 
kers are indulged with the liberty denied to us." They 
are ; and dearly have they earned it. You have come in 
(as a sect at least) in the cool of the evening, — at 
the eleventh hour. The Quaker character was hardened 
in the fires of persecution in the seventeenth century ; 
not quite to the stake and fagot, but little short of that : 
they grew up and thrived against noisome prisons, cruel 
beatings, whippings, stockings. They have since en- 
dured a century or two of scoffs, contempts ; they have 
been a by-word and a nay-word ; they have stood un- 
moved : and the consequence of long conscientious 
resistance on one part is invariably, in the end, remis- 
sion on the other. The legislature, that denied you the 
tolerance, which I do not know that at that time you even 
asked, gave them the liberty, which, without granting, 
they would have assumed. No penalties could have 
driven them into the churches. This is the conse- 



UNITARIAN PROTESTS. 127 

quence of entire measures. Had the early Quakers 
consented to take oaths, leaving a protest with the 
clerk of the court against them in the same breath 
with which they had taken them, do you in your con- 
science think that they would have been indulged at this 
day in their exclusive privilege of affirming ? Let your 
people go on for a century or so, marrying in your 
own fashion, and I will warrant them, before the end 
of it, the legislature will be willing to concede to them 
more than they at present demand. 

Either the institution of marriage depends not for 
its validity upon hypocritical compliances with the ritual 
of an alien church (and then I do not see why you can- 
not marry among yourselves, as the Quakers, without 
their indulgence, would have been doing to this day) , or 
it does depend upon such ritual compliance. And then, 
in your protests, you offend against a divine ordinance. 
I have read in the Essex-street Liturgy a form for the 
celebration of marriage. Why is this become a dead 
letter ? Oh ! it has never been legalized ; that is to say, 
in the law's eye, it is no marriage. But do you take 
upon you to say, in the view of the gospel it would be 
none? Would your own people, at least, look upon a 
couple so paired to be none? But the case of dowries, 
alimonies, inheritances, &c, which depend for their va- 
lidity upon the ceremonial of the church by law estab- 
lished, — are these nothing? That our children are not 
legally Filii Nullius, — is this nothing? I answer, 
Nothing ; to the preservation of a good conscience, 
nothing ; to a consistent Christianity, less than nothing. 
Sad worldly thorns they are indeed, and stumbling- 
blocks well worthy to be set out of the way by a 



128 HISSING AT THE THEATRES. 

legislature calling itself Christian ; but not likely to be 
removed in a hurry by any shrewd legislators who per- 
ceive that the petitioning complainants have not so 
much as bruised a shin in the resistance, but, prudently 
declining the briers and the prickles, nestle quietly 
down in the smooth two-sided velvet of a protesting oc- 
casional conformity. 

I am, dear sir, 

With much respect, yours, &c, 
Elia. 



ON 

THE CUSTOM OF HISSING AT THE THEATRES; 

WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF A CLUB OF DAMNED AUTHORS.* 

Mr. Eeflector, — I am one of those persons whom 
the world has thought proper to designate by the title 
of Damned Authors. In that memorable season of 
dramatic failures, 1806-7, — in which no fewer, I think, 
than two tragedies, four comedies, one opera, and three 
farces, suffered at Drury-lane Theatre, — I was found 
guilty of constructing an afterpiece, and was damned. 

Against the decision of the public in such instances 
there can be no appeal. The clerk of Chatham might 
as well have protested against the decision of Cade and 
his followers, who were then the public. Like him, I 
was condemned because I could write. 

* From the "Reflector," No. 3. 



HISSING AT THE THEATRES. 129 

Not but it did appear to some of us that the measures 
of the popular tribunal at that period savored a little of 
harshness and of the summum jus. The public mouth 
was early in the season fleshed upon the " Vindictive 
Man," and some pieces of that nature ; and it retained, 
through the remainer of it, a relish of blood. As Dr. 
Johnson would have said, " Sir, there was a habit of 
sibilation in the house." 

Still less am I disposed to inquire into the reason of 
the comparative lenity, on the other hand, with which 
some pieces were treated, which, to indifferent judges, 
seemed at least as much deserving of condemnation as 
some of those which met with it. I am willing to put 
a favorable construction upon the votes that were given 
against us ; I believe that there was no bribery or de- 
signed partiality in the case : only " our nonsense did 
not happen to suit their nonsense ; " that was all. 

But against the manner in which the public, on these 
occasions, think fit to deliver their disapprobation, I 
must and ever will protest. 

Sir, imagine — but you have been present at the 
damning of a piece (those who never had that felicity, 
I beg them to imagine) — a vast theatre, like that which 
Drury Lane was before it was a heap of dust and 
ashes (I insult not over its fallen greatness ; let it re- 
cover itself when it can for me, let it lift up its towering 
head once more, and take in poor authors to write for 
it; hie ccestus artemque repono~)^ — a theatre like that, filled 
with all sorts of disgusting sounds, — shrieks, groans, 
hisses, but chiefly the last, like the noise of many 
waters, or that which Don Quixote heard from the 
fulling-mills, or that wilder combination of devilish 

9 



130 HISSING AT THE THEATRES. 

sounds which St. Anthony listened to in the wilder- 
ness. 

Oh ! Mr. Reflector, is it not a pity, that the sweet 
human voice, which was given man to speak with, to 
sing with, to whisper tones of love in, to express com- 
pliance, to convey a favor, or to grant a suit, — that 
voice, which in a Siddons or a Braham rouses us, in a 
siren Catalani charms and captivates us, — that the 
musical, expressive human voice should be converted 
into a rival of the noises of silly geese, and irrational, 
venomous snakes? 

I never shall forget the sounds on my night. I never 
before that time fully felt the reception which the Author 
of All 111, in the " Paradise Lost," meets with from the 
critics in the pit, at the final close of his "Tragedy upon 
the Human Race," — though that, alas! met with too 
much success : — 

" From innumerable tongues 
A dismal universal hiss, the sound 
Of public scorn. Dreadful was the din 
Of hissing through the hall, thick swarming now 
With complicated monsters, head and tail, 
Scorpion and asp, and Amphisbasna dire, 
Cerastes horned, Hydrus, and Elops drear, 
And Dipsas." 

For hall substitute theatre, and you have the very 
image of what takes place at what is called the damnation 
of a piece, — and properly so called ; for here you see 
its origin plainly, whence the custom was derived, and 
what the first piece was that so suffered. After this, 
none can doubt the propriety of the appellation. 

But, sir, as to the justice of bestowing such appall- 
ing, heart- withering denunciations of the popular ob- 



HISSING AT THE THEATRES. 131 

loquy upon the venial mistake of a poor author, who 
thought to please us in the act of filling his pockets, — 
for the sum of his demerits amounts to no more than 
that, — it does, I own, seem to me a species of retribu- 
tive justice far too severe for the offence. A culprit in 
the pillory (bate the eggs) meets with no severer expro- 
bration. 

Indeed, I have often wondered that some modest 
critic has not proposed that there should be a wooden 
machine to that effect erected in some convenient part 
of the proscenium, which an unsuccessful author should 
be required to mount, and stand his hour, exposed to 
the apples and oranges of the pit. This amende hon- 
orable would well suit with the meanness of some 
authors, who, in their prologues, fairly prostrate their 
skulls to the audience, and seem to invite a pelting. 

Or why should they not have their pens publicly 
broke over their heads, as the swords of recreant knights 
in old times were, and an oath administered to them 
that they should never write again? 

Seriously, Messieurs the Public, this outrageous way 
which you have got of expressing your displeasures is 
too much for the occasion. When I was deafening 
under the effects of it, I could not help asking what 
crime of great moral turpitude I had committed : for 
every man about me seemed to feel the offence as per- 
sonal to himself ; as something which public interest and 
private feelings alike called upon him, in the strongest 
possible manner, to stigmatize with infamy. 

The Romans, it is well known to you, Mr. Reflector, 
took a gentler method of marking their disapprobation of 
an author's work. They were a humane and equitable 



132 HISSING AT THE THEATRES. 

nation. The left the furca and the patibulum, the axe 
and the rods, to great offenders : for these minor and 
(if I may so term them) extra-moral offences, the bent 
thumb was considered as a sufficient sign of disapproba- 
tion, — verier e pollicem; as the p?*essed thumb, premere 
pollicem, was a mark of approving. 

And really there seems to have been a sort of fitness 
in this method, a correspondency of sign in the punish- 
ment to the offence. For, as the action of writing is 
performed by bending the thumb forward, the retro- 
version or bending back of that joint did not unaptly 
point to the opposite of that action ; implying that it 
was the will of the audience that the author should 
write no more : a much more significant as well as more 
humane way of expressing that desire than our cus- 
tom of hissing, which is altogether senseless and inde- 
fensible. Nor do we find that the Eoman audiences 
deprived themselves, by this lenity, of any tittle of that 
supremacy which audiences in all ages have thought 
themselves bound to maintain over such as have been 
candidates for their applause. On the contrary, by this 
method they seem to have had the author, as we should 
express it, completely under finger and thumb. 

The provocations to which a dramatic genius is ex- 
posed from the public are so much the more vexatious 
as they are removed from any possibility of retaliation, 
the hope of which sweetens most other injuries ; for the 
public never writes itself. Not but something very like 
it took place at the time of the O. P. differences. The 
placards which were nightly exhibited, were, properly 
speaking, the composition of the public. The public 
wrote them, the public applauded them ; and precious 



HISSING AT THE THEATRES. 133 

morceaux of wit and eloquence they were, — except 
some few, of a better quality, which it is well known 
were furnished by professed dramatic writers. After 
this specimen of what the public can do for itself, it 
should be a little slow in condemning what others do 
for it. 

As the degrees of malignancy vary in people accord- 
ing as they have more or less of the Old Serpent (the 
father of hisses) in their composition, I have sometimes 
amused myself with analyzing this many-headed hydra, 
which calls itself the public, into the component parts 
of which it is " complicated, head and tail," and seeing 
how many varieties of the snake kind it can afford. 

First, there is the Common English Snake. — This 
is that part of the auditory who are always the majority 
at damnations ; but who, having no critical venom in 
themselves to sting them on, stay till they hear others 
hiss, and then join in for company. 

The Blind Worm is a species very nearly allied to 
the foregoing. Some naturalists have doubted whether 
they are not the same. 

The Rattlesnake . — These are your obstreperous 
talking critics, — the impertinent guides of the pit, — 
who will not give a plain man leave to enjoy an even- 
ing's entertainment; but, with their frothy jargon and 
incessant finding of faults., either drown his pleasure 
quite, or force him, in his own defence, to join in their 
clamorous censure. The hiss always originates with 
these. When this creature springs his rattle, you would 
think, from the noise it makes, there was something in 
it ; but you have only to examine the instrument from 
which the noise proceeds, and you will find it typical of 



134 HISSING AT THE THEATRES. 

a critic's tongue, — a shallow membrane, empty, volu- 
ble, and seated in the most contemptible part of the 
creature's body. 

The Whipsnake. — This is he that lashes the poor 
author the next day in the newspapers. 

The Deaf Adder, or Surda Echidna of Linnaeus. — - 
Under this head may be classed all that portion of the 
spectators (for audience they properly are not), who, 
not finding the first act of a piece answer to their pre- 
conceived notions of what a first act should be, like 
Obstinate in John Bunyan, positively thrust their fin- 
gers in their ears, that they may not hear a word of 
what is coming, though perhaps the very next act may 
be composed in a style as different as possible, and be 
written quite to their own tastes. These adders refuse 
to hear the voice of the charmer, because the tuning of 
his instrument gave them offence. 

I should weary you, and myself too, if I were to go 
through all the classes of the serpent kind. Two quali- 
ties are common to them all. They are creatures of 
remarkably cold digestions, and chiefly haunt pits and 
low grounds. 

I proceed with more pleasure to give you an account 
of a club to which I have the honor to belong. There 
are fourteen of us, who are all authors that have been 
once in our lives what is called damned. We meet on 
the anniversaries of our respective nights, and make 
ourselves merry at the expense of the public. The 
chief tenets which distinguish our society, and which 
every man among us is bound to hold for gospel, 
are, — 



HISSING AT THE THEATRES. 135 

That the public, or mob, in all ages, have been a set 
of blind, deaf, obstinate, senseless, illiterate savages. 
That no man of genius, in his senses, would be ambi- 
tious of pleasing such a capricious, ungrateful rabble. 
That the only legitimate end of writing for them is to 
pick their pockets ; and, that failing, we are at full 
liberty to vilify and abuse them as much as ever we 
think fit. 

That authors, by their affected pretences to humility, 
which they made use of as a cloak to insinuate their 
writings into the callous senses of the multitude, obtuse 
to every thing but the grossest flattery, have by degrees 
made that great beast their master ; as we may act sub- 
mission to children till we are obliged to practise it in 
earnest. That authors are and ought to be considered 
the masters and preceptors of the public, and not vice 
versa. That it was so in the days of Orpheus, Linus, 
and Musaeus ; and would be so again, if it were not that 
writers prove traitors to themselves. That, in particu- 
lar, in the days of the first of those three great authors 
just mentioned, audiences appear to have been perfect 
models of what audiences should be ; for though, along 
with the trees and the rocks and the wild creatures 
which he drew after him to listen to his strains, some 
serpents doubtless came to hear his music, it does not 
appear that any one among them ever lifted up a dissen- 
tient voice. They knew what was due to authors in 
those days. Now every stock and stone turns into a 
serpent, and has a voice. 

That the terms " courteous reader " and " candid audi- 
tors," as having given rise to a false notion in those to 
whom they were applied, as if they conferred upon them 



136 HISSING AT THE THEATRES. 

some right, which they cannot have, of exercising their 
judgments, ought to be utterly banished and exploded. 

These are our distinguishing tenets. To keep up the 
memory of the cause in which we suffered, as the an- 
cients sacrificed a goat, a supposed unhealthy animal, to 
-ZEsculapius, on our feast-nights we cut up a goose, an 
animal typical of the popular voice } to the deities of 
Candor and Patient Hearing. A zealous member of the 
society once proposed that we should revive the obsolete 
luxury of viper-broth ; but, the stomachs of some of the 
company rising at the proposition, we lost the benefit 
of that highly salutary and antidotal dish. 

The privilege of admission to our club is strictly 
limited to such as have been fairly damned. A piece 
that has met with ever so little applause, that has but 
languished its night or two, and then gone out, will 
never entitle its author to a seat among us. An excep- 
tion to our usual readiness in conferring this privilege 
is in the case of a writer, who, having been once con- 
demned, writes again, and becomes candidate for 3 
second martyrdom. Simple damnation we hold to be 
a merit ; but to be twice damned we adjudge infamous. 
Such a one we utterly reject, and blackball without a 
hearing : — 

" The common damned shun his society." 

Hoping that your publication of our regulations may 
be a means of inviting some more members into our 
society, I conclude this long letter. 
I am, sir, yours, 

SEMEL-D AMNATUS . * 

* The germ of this article is contained in the following passage from a 
letter to Manning (then sojourning among the Mandarins), in which Lamb, 



CHARLES LAMB'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 137 



CHAKLES LAMB'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY* 

Charles Lamb, born in the Inner Temple, 10th 
February, 1775 ; educated in Christ's Hospital ; after- 
half humorously, half pathetically, describes the reception the town gave 
his famous and unfortunate farce, " Mr. H. : " — 

" So I go creeping on since I was lamed with that cursed fall from off the 
top of Drury-Lane Theatre into the pit, something more than a year ago. 
However, I have been free of the house ever since, and the house was pretty 
free with me upon that occasion. Hang 'em, how they hissed ! It was not 
a hiss neither, but a sort of a frantic yell, like a congregation of mad geese ; 
with roaring sometimes like bears ; mows and mops like apes ; sometimes 
snakes, that hissed me into madness. 'Twas like Saint Anthony's tempta- 
tions. Mercy on us ! that God should give his favorite children, men, mouths 
to speak with, to discourse rationally, to promise smoothly, to flatter agree- 
ably, to encourage warmly, to counsel wisely, to sing with, to drink with, 
and to kiss with, and that they should turn them into mouths of adders, 
bears, wolves, hyenas, and whistle like tempests, and emit breath through 
them like distillations of aspic poison, to asperse and vilify the innocent 
labors of their fellow-creatures who are desirous to please them ! Heaven 
be pleased to make the teeth rot out of them all, therefore ! Make them a 
reproach, and all that pass by them to loll out their tongue at them ! Blind 
mouths! as Milton somewhere calls them." — Editor. 

* This, the briefest, and perhaps the wittiest and most truthful, auto- 
biography in the language, was published in the " New Monthly Magazine " 
a few months after its author's death, with the following preface or intro- 
duction from the pen of some unknown admirer of Elia : — 

" We have been favored, by the kindness of Mr. Upcott, with the follow- 
ing sketch, written in one of his manuscript collections, by Charles Lamb. It 
will be read with deep interest by all, but with the deepest interest by those 
who had the honor and the happiness of knowing the writer. It is so singu- 
larly characteristic, that we can scarcely persuade ourselves we do not hear 
it, as we read, spoken from his living lips. Slight as it is, it conveys the most 
exquisite and perfect notion of the personal manner and habits of our friend. 
Tor the intellectual rest, we lift the veil of its noble modesty, and can even 
here discern them. Mark its humor, crammed into a few thinking words, — 
its pathetic sensibility in the midst of contrast, — its wit, truth; and feel- 
ing, — and, above all, its fanciful retreat at the close, under a phantom cloud 
of death." — Editor. 



138 CHARLES LAMB'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 

wards a clerk in the Accountants' Office, East-India 
House; pensioned off from that service, 1825, after 
thirty-three years' service ; is now a gentleman at 
large ; can remember few specialities in his life worth 
noting, except that he once caught a swallow flying 
(teste sud manu) . Below the middle stature ; cast of 
face slightly Jewish, with no Judaic tinge in his com- 
plexional religion ; stammers abominably, and is there- 
fore more apt to discharge his occasional conversation 
in a quaint aphorism, or a poor quibble, than in set and 
edifying speeches ; has consequently been libelled as a 
person always aiming at wit ; which, as he told a dull 
fellow that charged him with it, is at least as good as 
aiming at dulness. A small eater, but not drinker ; 
confesses a partiality for the production of the juniper- 
berry ; was a fierce smoker of tobacco, but may be re- 
sembled to a volcano burnt out, emitting only now and 
then a casual puff. Has been guilty of obtruding upon 
the public a tale, in prose, called "Rosamund Gray;" 
a dramatic sketch, named "John Woodvil;" a "Fare- 
well Ode to Tobacco," with sundry other poems, and 
light prose matter, collected in two slight crown octa- 
vos, and pompously christened his works, though in 
fact they were his recreations ; and his true works may 
be found on the shelves of Leadenhall Street, filling 
some hundred folios. He is also the true Elia, whose 
Essays are extant in a little volume, published a year 
or two since, and rather better known from that name 
without a meaning than from any thing he has done, or 
can hope to do, in his own. He was also the first to 
draw the public attention to the old English dramatists, 
in a work called " Specimens of English Dramatic Writ- 



ON THE DEATH OF COLERIDGE. 139 

ers who lived about the Time of Shakspeare," published 
about fifteen years since. In short, all his merits and 
demerits to set forth would take to the end of Mr. 
Upcott's book, and then not be told truly. 
He died 18 , much lamented.* 
Witness his hand, 

Charles Lamb. 

18th April, 1827. 



ON THE DEATH OF COLERIDGE.f 

When I heard of the death of Coleridge, it was 
without grief. It seemed to me that he long had been 
on the confines of the next world, — that he had a 

* To anybody. — Please to fill up these blanks. 

f Disraeli wrote a book on the Quarrels of Authors. Somebody should 
write one on the Friendships of Literary Men. If such a work is ever writ- 
ten, Charles Lamb and Samuel Taylor Coleridge will be honorably men- 
tioned therein. Among all the friendships celebrated in tale or history, 
there is none more admirable than that which existed between these two 
eminent men. The "golden thread that tied their hearts together" was 
never broken. Their friendship was never " chipt or diminished; " but, the 
longer they lived, the stronger it grew. Death could not destroy it. 

Lamb, after Coleridge's death, as if weary of "this green earth," as if 
not caring if " sun and sky and breeze, and solitary walks, and summer 
holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the delicious juices of meats and 
fishes, and society, and the cheerful glass, and candle-light, and fireside 
conversations, and innocent vanities, and jests, and irony itself," went out 
with life, willingly sought "Lavinian shores." 

" Lamb," as Mr. JohnForster says in his beautiful tribute to his memory, 
" never fairly recovered the death of Coleridge. He thought of little else 
(his sister was but another portion of himself) until his own great spirit 
joined his friend. He had a habit of venting his melancholy in a sort of 
mirth. He would, with nothing graver than a pun, ' cleanse his bosom of the 
perilous stuff that weighed' upon it. In a jest, or a few light phrases, he 
would lay open the last recesses of his heart. So in respect of the death of 



140 ON THE DEATH OF COLERIDGE. 

Lunger for eternity. I grieved then that I could not 
grieve. But, since, I feel how great a part he was of 
me. His great and dear spirit haunts me. I cannot 
think a thought, I cannot make a criticism on men or 
books, without an ineffectual turning and reference to 
him. He was the proof and touchstone of all my 
cogitations. He was a Grecian (or in the first form) 
at Christ's Hospital, where I was Deputy-Grecian ; and 
the same subordination and deference to him I have 
preserved through a life-long acquaintance. Great in 
his writings, he was greatest in his conversation. In 
him was disproved that old maxim, that we should allow 
every one his share of talk. He would talk from morn 
to dewy eve, nor cease till far midnight ; yet who ever 
would interrupt him ? who would obstruct that continu- 
ous flow of converse, fetched from Helicon or Zion? 
He had the tact of making the unintelligible seem plain. 
Many who read the abstruser parts of his "Friend" 
would complain that his works did not answer to his 
spoken wisdom. They were identical. But he had a 
tone in oral delivery which seemed to convey sense to 
those who were otherwise imperfect recipients. He 
was my fifty-years-old friend without a dissension. 
Never saw I his likeness, nor probably the world can 

Coleridge. Some old friends of his saw him two or three weeks ago, and 
remarked the constant turning and reference of his mind. He interrupted 
himself and them almost every instant with some play of affected wonder 
or astonishment, or humorous melancholy, on the words, ' Coleridge is dead.'' 
Nothing could divert him from that ; for the thought of it never left him. 
About the same time, we had written to him to request a few lines for the 
literary album of a gentleman who entertained a fitting admiration of his 
genius. It was the last request we were destined to make, the last kindness 
we were allowed to receive. He wrote in Mr. Keymer's volume, — and 
wrote of Coleridge." — Editor. 



THE OLD ACTORS. 141 

see again. I seem to love the house he died at more 
passionately than when he lived. I love the faithful 
Gilmans more than while they exercised their virtues 
towards him living. What was his mansion is conse- 
crated to me a chapel. 

Edmonton, Nov. 21, 1834. 



THE OLD ACTORS* 

I do not know a more mortifying thing than to be 
conscious of a foregone delight, with a total oblivion of 
the person and manner which conveyed it. In dreams 
I often stretch and strain after the countenance of Edwin 
whom I once saw in " Peeping Tom." I cannot catch a 
feature of him. He is no more to me than Nokes or 
Pinkethman. Parsons, and, still more, Dodd, were near 
being lost to me till I was refreshed with their portraits 
(fine treat) the other day at Mr. Matthews's gallery at 
Highgate ; which, with the exception of the Hogarth 
pictures a few years since exhibited in Pall Mall, was 
the most delightful collection I ever gained admission to. 
There hang the players, in their single persons and 
in grouped scenes, from the Restoration, — Bettertons, 
Booths, Garricks, — justifying the prejudices which we 
entertain for them ; the Bracegirdles, the Mountforts, 
and the Oldfields, fresh as Gibber has described them ; 
the Woffington (a true Hogarth) upon a couch, dally- 
ing and dangerous ; the screen scene in Brinsley's famous 
comedy ; with Smith and Mrs. Abingdon whom I have 

* From the "London Magazine," 1822. 



142 THE OLD ACTORS. 

not seen ; and the rest, whom, having seen, I see still 
there. There is Henderson, unrivalled in Comus, whom 
I saw at second-hand in the elder Harley ; Harley, the 
rival of Holman, in Horatio ; Holman, with the bright 
glittering teeth, in Lothario, and the deep pavior's sighs 
in Romeo, the jolliest person (" our son is fat") of any 
Hamlet I have yet seen, with the most laudable at- 
tempts (for a personable man) at looking melancholy ; 
and Pope, the abdicated monarch of tragedy and com- 
edy, in Harry the Eighth ; and Lord Townley. There 
hang the two Aickins, brethren in mediocrity ; Wrough- 
ton, who in Kitely seemed to have forgotten that in 
prouder days he had personated Alexander ; the specious 
form of John Palmer, with the special effrontery of 
Bobby ; Bensley, with the trumpet-tongue ; and little 
Quick (the retired Dioclesian of Islington), with his 
squeak like a Bart'lemew fiddle. There are fixed, cold 
as in life, the immovable features of Moody, who, afraid 
of o'erstepping Nature, sometimes stopped short of her ; 
and the restless fidgetiness of Lewis, who, with no such 
fears, not seldom leaped o' the other side. There hang 
Farren and Whitfield, and Burton and Phillimore, 
names of small account in those times, but which, 
remembered now, or casually recalled by the sight of an 
old play-bill, with their associated recordations, can 
"drown an eye unused to flow." There too hangs, not 
far removed from them in death, the graceful plainness 
of the first Mrs. Pope, with a voice unstrung by age, 
but which in her better days must have competed with 
the silver tones of Barry himself, so enchanting in decay 
do I remember it, — of all her lady parts, exceeding 
herself in the " Lady Quakeress " (there earth touched 



CAPTAIN STAEKEY. 143 

heaven) of O'Keefe, when she played it to the " merry 
cousin " of Lewis : and Mrs. Mattocks, the sensiblest of 
viragos ; and Miss Pope, a gentlewoman ever, to the 
verge of ungentility, with Churchill's compliment still 
burnishing upon her gay honeycomb lips. There are 
the two Bannisters, and Sedgwick, and Kelly, and Dig- 
num (IHggy)j and the by-gone features of Mrs. Ward, 
matchless in Lady Loverule : and the collective majesty 
of the whole Kemble family; and (Shakspeare's woman) 
Dora Jordan ; and, by her, two antics, who, in former 
and in latter days, have chiefly beguiled us of our griefs ; 
whose portraits we shall strive to recall, for the sympa- 
thy of those who may not have had the benefit of view- 
ins; the matchless Hioh^ate collection.* 



CAPTAIN STAEKEY. 

To the Editor of the " E very-day Book : " — 

Deae Sie . — I read your account of this unfortunate 
being, and his forlorn piece of self-history, f with that 
smile of half-interest which the annals of insignificance 
excite, till I came to where he says, " I was bound ap- 

* Here follows, in the article as originally published, the -well-known 
masterly pen-and-ink portraits of Suett and Munden. The article on Suett, 
Lamb incorporated into the "Essay on some of the old Actors:" that on 
Munden. he reprinted as a separate chapter in the first series of the Essays 
of Elia. — Editor, 

f " Memoirs of the Life of Benjamin Starkey, late of London, but now an 
inmate of the Freemen's Hospital in Newcastle. Written by himself. With 
a portrait of the author, and a fac-simile of his handwriting. Printed and 
sold by William Hall, Great Market, Newcastle. " ISIS. 12mo, pp. 14. 






144 CAPTAIN STARKEY. 

prentice to Mr. William Bird, an eminent writer, and 
teacher of languages and mathematics," &c. ; when I 
started as one does in the recognition of an old acquaint- 
ance in a supposed stranger. This, then, was that Star- 
key of whom I have heard my sister relate so many pleas- 
ant anecdotes ; and whom, never having seen, I yet seem 
almost to remember. For nearly fifty years, she had 
lost all sight of him ; and, behold ! the gentle usher of 
her youth, grown into an aged beggar, dubbed with an 
opprobrious title to which he had no pretensions ; an 
object and a May-game ! To what base purposes may 
we not return ! What may not have been the meek 
creature's sufferings, what his wanderings, before he 
finally settled down in the comparative comfort of an old 
hospitaller of the almonry of Newcastle ? And is poor 
Starkey dead? 

I was a scholar of that "eminent writer" that he speaks 
of; but Starkey had quitted the school about a year 
before I came to it. Still the odor of his merits had left 
a fragrancy upon the recollection of the elder pupils. 
The schoolroom stands where it did, looking into a dis- 
colored, dingy garden in the passage leading from Fet- 
ter Lane into Bartlett's Buildings. It is still a school, 
though the main prop, alas ! has fallen so ingloriously ; 
and bears a Latin inscription over the entrance in the 
lane, which was unknown in our humbler times. Heaven 
knows what " languages " were taught in it then ! I am 
sure that neither my sister nor myself brought any out 
of it but a little of our native English. By "mathe- 
matics," reader, must be understood "ciphering." It 
was, in fact, a humble day-school, at which reading and 
writing were taught to us boys in the morning ; and the 



CAPTAIN STARKEY. 145 

same slender erudition was communicated to the girls,, 
our sisters, &c. , in the evening. Now, Starkey presided, 
under Bird, over both establishments. In my time, Mr. 
Cook, now or lately a respectable singer and performer at 
Drury-Lane Theatre, and nephew to Mr. Bird, had suc- 
ceeded to him. I well remember Bird. He was a squat, 
corpulent, middle-sized man, with something of the gen- 
tleman about him, and that peculiar mild tone — espe- 
cially while he was inflicting punishment — which is so 
much more terrible to children than the angriest looks 
and gestures. Whippings were not frequent ; but, when 
they took place, the correction was performed in a pri- 
vate room adjoining, where we could only hear the 
plaints, but saw nothing. This heightened the decorum 
and the solemnity. But the ordinary chastisement was 
the bastinado, a stroke or two on the palm with that 
almost obsolete weapon now, — -the ferule. A ferule 
was a sort of flat ruler, widened, at the inflicting end, 
into a shape resembling a pear, — but nothing like so 
sweet, — with a delectable hole in the middle to raise 
blisters, like a cupping-glass. I have an intense recol- 
lection of that disused instrument of torture, and the 
malignancy, in proportion to the apparent mildness, 
with which its strokes were applied. The idea of a rod 
is accompanied with something ludicrous ; but by no 
process can I look back upon this blister-raiser with any 
thing but unmingled horror. To make him look more 
formidable, — if a pedagogue had need of these height- 
enings, — Bird wore one of those flowered Indian gowns 
formerly in use with school-masters, the strange figures 
upon which we used to interpret into hieroglyphics of 

10 



146 CAPTAIN STARKEY. 

pain and suffering. But, boyish fears apart, Bird, 1 be- 
lieve, was, in the main, a humane and judicious master. 

Oh, how I remember our legs wedged into those un- 
comfortable sloping desks, where we sat elbowing each 
other ; and the injunctions to attain a free hand, unat- 
tainable in that position ; the first copy I wrote after, 
with its moral lesson, "Art improves Nature ;" the still 
earlier pot-hooks and the hangers, some traces of which 
I fear may yet be apparent in this manuscript ; the 
truant looks side-long to the garden, which seemed a 
mockery of our imprisonment ; the prize for best spell- 
ing which had almost turned my head, and which, to this 
day, I cannot reflect upon without a vanity, which I ought 
to be ashamed of; our little leaden inkstands, not sep- 
arately subsisting, but sunk into the desks ; the bright, 
punctually-washed morning fingers, darkening gradu- 
ally with another and another ink-spot ! What a world 
of little associated circumstances, pains, and pleasures, 
mingling their quotas of pleasure, arise at the reading 
of those few simple words, — "Mr. William Bird, an 
eminent writer, and teacher of languages and mathemat- 
ics in Fetter Lane, Hblborn " ! 

Poor Starkey, when young, had that peculiar stamp 
of old-fashionedness in his face which makes it impos- 
sible for a beholder to predicate any particular age in the 
object. You can scarce make a guess between seven- 
teen and seven and thirty. This antique cast always 
seems to promise ill-luck and penury. Yet it seems he 
was not always the abject thing he came to. My sis- 
ter, who well remembers him, can hardly forgive Mr. 
Thomas Eanson for making an etching so unlike her 
idea of him when he was a youthful teacher at Mr. Bird's 



CAPTAIN STARKEY. 147 

school. Old age and poverty — a life-long poverty, 
she thinks — could at no time have so effaced the 
marks of native gentility which were once so visible in 
a face otherwise strikingly ugly, thin, and care-worn. 
From her recollections of him, she thinks that he would 
have wanted bread before he would have begged or bor- 
rowed a half-penny. "If any of the girls," she says, 
"who were my school-fellows, should be reading, through 
their aged spectacles, tidings, from the dead, of their 
youthful friend Starkey, they will feel a pang, as I do, 
at having teased his gentle spirit." They were big 
girls, it seems, too old to attend his instructions with 
the silence necessary ; and, however old age and a long 
state of beggary seem to have reduced his writing facul- 
ties to a state of imbecility, in those days his language 
occasionally rose to the bold and figurative : for, when 
he was in despair to stop their chattering, his ordinary 
phrase was, "Ladies, if you will not hold your peace, 
not all the powers in heaven can make you." Once he 
was missing for a day or two : he had run away. A lit- 
tle, old, unhappy-looking man brought him back, — it 
was his father, — and he did no business in the school 
that day, but sat moping in a corner, with his hands 
before his face ; and the girls, his tormentors, in pity 
for his case, for the rest of that day forbore to annoy him. 
"I had been there but a few months," adds she, "when 
Starkey, who was the chief instructor of us girls, com- 
municated to us a profound secret, — that the tragedy of 
f Cato ' was shortly to be acted by the elder boys, and 
that we were to be invited to the representation." That 
Starkey lent a helping hand in fashioning the actors, she 
remembers ; and, but for his unfortunate person, he 



148 A POPULAR FALLACY. 

might have had some distinguished part in the scene to 
enact. As it was, he had the arduous task of prompter 
assigned to him ; and his feeble voice was heard clear and 
distinct, repeating the text during the whole perform- 
ance. She describes her recollection of the cast of char- 
acters, even now, with a relish. Martia, by the hand- 
some Edgar Hickman, who afterwards went to Africa, 
and of whom she never afterwards heard tidings ; Lucia, 
by Master Walker, whose sister was her particular friend ; 
Cato, by John Hunter, a masterly declaimer, but a plain 
boy, and shorter by the head than his two sons in the 
scene, &c. In conclusion, Starkey appears to have 
been one of those mild spirits, which, not originally de- 
ficient in understanding, are crushed by penury into 
dejection and feebleness. He might have proved a use- 
ful adjunct, if not an ornament, to society, if Fortune 
had taken him into a very little fostering ; but, wanting 
that, he became a captain, — a by-word, — and lived 
and died a broken bulrush. 



A POPULAR FALLACY,* 

THAT A DEFORMED PERSON IS A LORD. 

After a careful perusal of the most approved works 
that treat of nobility, and of its origin in these realms 
in particular, we are left very much in the dark as to the 
original patent in which this branch of it is recognized. 
Neither Camden in his "Etymologie and Original of 
Barons," nor Dugdale in his "Baronage of England," 

* From the "New Monthly Magazine," 1826. 



A POPULAR FALLACY. 149 

nor Selden (a more exact and laborious inquirer than 
either) in his " Titles of Honor," afford a glimpse of sat- 
isfaction upon the subject. There is an heraldic term, 
indeed, which seems to imply gentility, and the right to 
coat armor (but nothing further) , in persons thus quali- 
fied. But the sinister bend is more probably interpreted 
by the best writers on this science, of some irregularity 
of birth than of bodily conformation. Nobility is either 
hereditary or by creation, commonly called patent. Of 
the former kind, the title in question cannot be, seeing 
that the notion of it is limited to a personal distinction 
which does not necessarily follow in the blood. Honors 
of this nature, as Mr. Anstey very well observes, descend, 
moreover, in a right line. It must be by patent, then, if 
any thing. But who can show it ? How comes it to 
be dormant? Under what king's reign is it patented? 
Among the grounds of nobility cited by the learned Mr. 
Ashmole, after w Services in the Field or in the Council 
Chamber," he judiciously sets down " Honors conferred 
by the sovereign out of mere benevolence, or as favoring 
one subject rather than another for some likeness or con- 
formity observed (or but supposed) in him to the royal 
nature ; " and instances the graces showered upon Charles 
Brandon, who, " in his goodly person being thought not 
a little to favor the port and bearing of the king's own 
majesty, was by that sovereign, King Henry the Eighth, 
for some or one of these respects, highly promoted and 
preferred." Here, if anywhere, we thought we had 
discovered a clew to our researches. But after a painful 
investigation of the rolls and records under the reign of 
Richard the Third, or " Richard Crouchback," as he is 
more usually designated in the chronicles, — from a tra- 



150 A POPULAR FALLACY. 

ditionary stoop or gibbosity in that part, — we do not 
find that that monarch conferred any such lordships as 
are here pretended, upon any subject or subjects, on a 
simple plea of " conformity" in that respect to the " royal 
nature." The posture of affairs, in those tumultuous 
times preceding the battle of Bos worth, possibly left 
him at no leisure to attend to such niceties. Further 
than his reign, we have not extended our inquiries ; the 
kings of England who preceded or followed him being 
generally described by historians to have been of straight 
and clean limbs, the "natural derivative," says Daniel,* 
" of high blood, if not its primitive recommendation to 
such ennoblement, as denoting strength and martial 
prowess, — the qualities set most by in that fighting age." 
Another motive, which inclines us to scruple the valid- 
ity of this claim, is the remarkable fact, that none of the 
persons in whom the right is supposed to be vested do 
ever insist upon it themselves. There is no instance of 
any of them " suing his patent," as the law-books call 
it ; much less of his having actually stepped up into his 
proper seat, as, so qualified, we might expect that some 
of them would have had the spirit to do, in the House 
of Lords. On the contrary, it seems to be a distinction 
thrust upon them. " Their title of ' lord,' " says one of 
their own body, speaking of the common people, "I 
never much valued, and now I entirely despise ; and yet 
they will force it upon me as an honor which they 
have a right to bestow, and which I have none to re- 
fuse." f Upon a dispassionate review of the subject, we 
are disposed to believe that there is *no right to the 

* History of England, " Temporibus Edwardi Primi et sequentibus." 
f Hay on Deformity. 



LETTER TO AN OLD GENTLEMAN. 151 

peerage incident to mere bodily configuration ; that the 
title in dispute is merely honorary, and depending upon 
the breath of the common people, which in these realms 
is so far from the power of conferring nobility, that the 
ablest constitutionalists have agreed in nothing more 
unanimously than in the maxim, that "the king is the 
sole fountain of honor." 



LETTER TO AN OLD GENTLEMAN WHOSE 
EDUCATION HAS BEEN NEGLECTED.* 

To the Editor of the " London Magazine : " — 

Dear Sir, — I send you a bantering "Epistle to an Old Gentleman 
whose Education is supposed to have been neglected." Of course, it was 
suggested by some letters of your admirable Opium-Eater, the discontinuance 
of which has caused so much regret to myself in common with most of your 
readers. You will do me injustice by supposing, that, in the remotest degree, 
it was my intention to ridicule those papers. The fact is, the most serious 
things may give rise to an innocent burlesque ; and, the more serious they 
are, the fitter they become for that purpose. It is not to be supposed that 
Charles Cotton did not entertain a very high regard for Yirgil, notwith- 
standing he travestied that poet. Yourself can testify the deep respect I 
have always held for the profound learning and penetrating genius of our 
friend. Nothing upon earth would give me greater pleasure than to find 
that he has not lost sight of his entertaining and instructive purpose. 

I am, dear sir, yours and his sincerely, Elia. 

My dear Sir, — The question which you have done 
me the honor to propose to me, through the medium of 
our common friend, Mr. Grierson, I shall endeavor to 
answer with as much exactness as a limited observa- 
tion and experience can warrant. 

You ask, — or rather Mr. Grierson, in his own inter- 
esting language, asks for you, — "Whether a person at 
the age of sixty-three, with no more proficiency than a 

* From the" London Magazine," 1825. 



152 LETTER TO AN OLD GENTLEMAN 

tolerable knowledge of most of the characters of the 
English alphabet at first sight amounts to, by dint of 
persevering application and good masters, — a docile 
and ingenuous disposition on the part of the pupil 
always presupposed, — may hope to arrive, within a 
presumable number of years, at that degree of attain- 
ments which shall entitle the possessor to the character, 
which you are on so many accounts justly desirous of 
acquiring, of a learned man." 

This is fairly and candidly stated, — only I could wish 
that on one point you had been a little more explicit. In 
the mean time, I will take it for granted, that by a "know- 
ledge of the alphabetic characters" you confine your 
meaning to the single powers only, as you are silent on 
the subject of the diphthongs and harder combinations. 

Why, truly, sir, when I consider the vast circle of 
sciences, — it is not here worth while to trouble you 
with the distinction between learning and science, which 
a man must be understood to have made the tour of in 
these days, before the world will be willing to concede 
to him the title which you aspire to, — I am almost dis- 
posed to reply to your inquiry by a direct answer in 
the negative. 

However, where all cannot be compassed, a great 
deal that is truly valuable may be accomplished. I am 
unwilling to throw out any remarks that should have a 
tendency to damp a hopeful genius ; but I must not, in 
fairness, conceal from you that you have much to do. 
The consciousness of difficulty is sometimes a spur to 
exertion. Rome — or rather, my dear sir, to borrow 
an illustration from a place as yet more familiar to you, 
Eumford — Rumford was not built in a day. 



WHOSE EDUCATION HAS BEEN NEGLECTED. 153 

Your mind as yet, give me leave to tell you, is in 
the state of a sheet of white paper. We must not 
blot or blur it over too hastily. Or, to use an op- 
posite simile, it is like a piece of parchment all be- 
scrawled and bescribbled over with characters of no 
sense or import, which we must carefully erase and 
remove before we can make way for the authentic 
characters or impresses which are to be substituted in 
their stead by the corrective hand of science. 

Your mind, my dear sir, again, resembles that same 
parchment, which we will suppose a little hardened by 
time and disuse. We may apply the characters; but 
are we sure that the ink will sink? 

You are in the condition of a traveller that has all 
his journey to begin. And, again, you are worse off 
than the traveller which I have supposed ; for you 
have already lost your way. 

You have much to learn, which you have never been 
taught ; and more, I fear, to unlearn, which you have 
been taught erroneously. You have hitherto, I dare 
say, imagined that the sun moves round the earth. 
When you shall have mastered the true solar system, 
you will have quite a different theory upon that point, 
I assure you. I mention but this instance. Your own 
experience, as knowledge advances, will furnish you 
with many parallels. 

I can scarcely approve of the intention, which Mr. 
Grierson informs me you had contemplated, of entering 
yourself at a common seminary, and working your way 
up from the lower to the higher forms with the children. 
I see more to admire in the modesty than in the expe- 
diency of such a resolution. I own I cannot reconcile 



154 LETTER TO AN OLD GENTLEMAN 

myself to the spectacle of a gentleman at your time of 
life, seated, as must be your case at first, below a tyro 
of four or five ; for at that early age the rudiments of 
education usually commence in this country. I doubt 
whether more might not be lost in the point of fitness 
than would be gained in the advantages which you pro- 
pose to yourself by this scheme. 

You say you stand in need of emulation ; that this 
incitement is nowhere to be had but at a public school ; 
that you should be more sensible of your progress by 
comparing it with the daily progress of those around 
you. But have you considered the nature of emula- 
tion, and how it is sustained at those tender years 
which you would have to come in competition with? 
I am afraid you are dreaming of academic prizes and 
distinctions. Alas ! in the university for which you 
are preparing, the highest medal would be a silver 
penny ; and you must graduate in nuts and oranges. 

I know that Peter, the great Czar — or Emperor — of 
Muscovy, submitted himself to the discipline of a dock- 
yard at Deptford, that he might learn, and convey to 
his countrymen, the noble art of ship-building. You 
are old enough to remember him, or at least the talk 
about him. I call to mind also other great princes, 
who, to instruct themselves in the theory and practice 
of war, and set an example of subordination to their 
subjects, have condescended to enroll themselves as pri- 
vate soldiers ; and, passing through the successive ranks 
of corporal, quarter-master, and the rest, have served 
their way up to the station at which most princes are 
willing enough to set out, — of general and command- 
er-in-chief over their own forces. But — besides that 



WHOSE EDUCATION HAS BEEN NEGLECTED. 155 

there is oftentimes great sham and pretence in their 
show of mock humility — the competition which they 
stooped to was with their co-evals, however inferior to 
them in birth. Between ages so very disparate as 
those which you contemplate, I fear there can no salu- 
tary emulation subsist. 

Again : in the other alternative, could you submit to 
the ordinary reproofs and discipline of a day-school? 
Could you bear to be corrected for your faults ? Or 
how would it look to see you put to stand, as must be 
the case sometimes, in a corner? 

I am afraid the idea of a public school in your cir- 
cumstances must be given up. 

But is it impossible, my dear sir, to find some person 
of your own age, — if of the other sex, the more agree- 
able, perhaps, — whose information, like your own, has 
rather lagged behind their years, who should be willing 
to set out from the same point with yourself? to under- 
go the same tasks ? — thus at once incitin g and sweet- 
ening each other's labors in a sort of friendly rivalry. 
Such a one, I think, it would not be difficult to find in 
some of the western parts of this island, — about Dart- 
moor, for instance. 

Or what if, from your own estate, — that estate, 
which, unexpectedly acquired so late in life, has in- 
spired into you this generous thirst after knowledge, — 
you were to select some elderly peasant, that might best 
be spared from the land, to come and begin his educa- 
tion with you, that you might till, as it were, your 
minds together, — one whose heavier progress might 
invite, without a fear of discouraging, your emu- 
lation ? We might then see — starting from an equal 



156 LETTER TO AN OLD GENTLEMAN 

post — the difference of the clownish and the gentle 
blood. 

A private education, then, or such a one as I have 
been describing, being determined on, we must in the 
next place look out for a preceptor ; for it will be some 
time before either of you, left to yourselves, will be able 
to assist the other to any great purpose in his studies. 

And now, my dear sir, if, in describing such a tutor 
as I have imagined for you, I use a style a little above 
the familiar one in which I have hitherto chosen to ad- 
dress you, the nature of the subject must be my apol- 
ogy. Difficile est de scientiis inscienter loqui ; which is 
as much as to say, that, w in treating of scientific mat- 
ters, it is difficult to avoid the use of scientific terms." 
But I shall endeavor to be as plain as possible. I am 
not going to present you with the ideal of a pedagogue 
as it may exist in my fancy, or has possibly been real- 
ized in the persons of Buchanan and Busby. Some- 
thing less than perfection will serve our turn. The 
scheme which I propose in this first or introductory letter 
has reference to the first four or five years of your edu- 
cation only ; and, in enumerating the qualifications of 
him that should undertake the direction of your studies, 
I shall rather point out the minimum, or least, that I 
shall require of him, than trouble you in the search of 
attainments neither common nor necessary to our imme- 
diate purpose. 

He should be a man of deep and extensive knowl- 
edge. So much at least is indispensable. Something 
older than yourself, I could wish him, because years 
add reverence. 

To his age and great learning, he should be blessed 



WHOSE EDUCATION HAS BEEN NEGLECTED. 157 

with a temper and a patience willing to accommodate 
itself to the imperfections of the slowest and meanest 
capacities. Such a one, in former days, Mr. Hartlib 
appears to have been ; and such, in our days, I take Mr. 
Grierson to be : but our friend, you know, unhappily 
has other engagements. I do not demand a consum- 
mate grammarian ; but he must be a thorough master 
of vernacular orthography, with an insight into the 
accentualities and punctualities of modern Saxon, or 
English. He must be competently instructed (or how 
shall he instruct you?) in the tetralogy, or four first 
rules, upon which not only arithmetic, but geometry, 
and the pure mathematics themselves, are grounded, 
I do not require that he should have measured the globe 
with Cook or Ortelius ; but it is desirable that he should 
have a general knowledge (I do not mean a very nice 
or pedantic one) of the great division of the earth 
into four parts, so as to teach you readily to name the 
quarters. He must have a genius capable in some de- 
gree of soaring to the upper element, to deduce from 
thence the not much dissimilar computation of the cardi- 
nal points, or hinges, upon which those invisible phe- 
nomena, which naturalists agree to term winds, do 
perpetually shift and turn. He must instruct you, in 
imitation of the old Orphic fragments (the mention of 
which has possibly escaped you) , in numeric and har- 
monious responses, to deliver the number of solar revo- 
lutions within which each of the twelve periods, into 
which the Annus Vulgaris, or common year, is divided, 
doth usually complete and terminate itself. The inter- 
calates, and other subtle problems, he will do well to 
omit, till riper years, and course of study, shall have 



158 LETTER TO AX OLD GENTLEMAN. 

rendered you more capable thereof. He must be capa- 
ble of embracing all history, so as, from the countless 
myriads of individual men who have peopled this globe 
of earth, — for it is a globe, — by comparison of their 
respective births, lives, deaths, fortunes, conduct, prow- 
ess, &c, to pronounce, and teach you to pronounce, 
dogmatically and catechetically, who was the richest, 
who was the strongest, who was the wisest, who was 
the meekest, man that ever lived ; to the facilitation 
of which solution, you will readily conceive, a smatter- 
ing of biography would in no inconsiderable degree 
conduce. Leaving the dialects of men (in one of 
which I shall take leave to suppose you by this time 
at least superficially instituted), you will learn to 
ascend with him to the contemplation of that unarticu- 
lated language which was before the written tongue ; 
and, with the aid of the elder Phrygian or .ZEsopic key, 
to interpret the sounds by which the animal tribes com- 
municate their minds, evolving moral instruction with 
delight from the dialogue of cocks, dogs, and foxes. 
Or, marrying theology with verse, from whose mixture 
a beautiful and healthy offspring may be expected, in 
your own native accents (but purified) , you will keep 
time together to the profound harpings of the more 
modern or Wattsian hymnics. 

Thus far I have ventured to conduct you to a " hill- 
side, whence you may discern the right path of a virtu- 
ous and noble education ; laborious indeed at the first 
ascent, but else so smooth, so green, so full of goodly 
prospects and melodious sounds on every side, that the 
harp of Orpheus was not more charming." * 

* Milton's " Tracate on Education," addressed to Mr. Hartlib. 






AMBIGUITIES FROM PROPER NAMES. 159 

With my best respects to Mr. Grierson, when you 
see him, 

I remain, dear sir, your obedient servant, 

Elia. 



ON THE AMBIGUITIES ARISING FROM 
PROPER NAMES* 

How oddly it happens that the same sound shall sug- 
gest to the minds of two persons hearing it ideas the 
most opposite ! I was conversing, a few years since, 
with a young friend upon the subject of poetry, and 
particularly that species of it which is known by the 
name of the epithalamium. I ventured to assert that 
the most perfect specimen of it in our language was the 
" Epithalamium " of Spenser upon his own marriage. 

My young gentleman, who has a smattering of taste, 
and would not willingly be thought ignorant of any 
thing remotely connected with the belles-lettres, expressed 
a degree of surprise, mixed with mortification, that he 
should never have heard of this poem ; Spenser being 
an author with whose writings he thought himself pecu- 
liarly conversant. 

I offered to show him the poem in the fine folio copy 
of the poet's works which I have at home. He seemed 
pleased with the offer, though the mention of the folio 
seemed again to puzzle him. But, presently after, 

* From " The Reflector," No. 2. All the facts (and fictions too, if there 
be any) in this article will be found in one of Lamb's early letters to 
Wordsworth. — Editor. 



160 AMBIGUITIES FROM PROPER NAMES. 

assuming a grave look, he compassionately muttered to 
himself, w Poor Spencer ! " 

There was something in the tone with which he spoke 
these words that struck me not a little. It was more 
like the accent with which a man bemoans some recent 
calamity that has happened to a friend, than that tone 
of sober grief with which we lament the sorrows of a 
person, however excellent and however grievous his 
afflictions may have been, who has been dead more than 
two centuries. I had the curiosity to inquire into the 
reasons of so uncommon an ejaculation. My young 
gentleman, with a more solemn tone of pathos than 
before, repeated, "Poor Spencer !" and added, "He has 
lost his wife ! " 

My astonishment at this assertion rose to such a 
height, that I began to think the brain of my young 
friend must be cracked, or some unaccountable re very 
had gotten possession of it. But, upon further explana- 
tion, it appeared that the word "Spenser" — which to 
you or me, reader, in a conversation upon poetry too, 
would naturally have called up the idea of an old poet 
in a ruff, one Edmund Spenser, that flourished in the 
days of Queen Elizabeth, and wrote a poem called 
"The Fairy Queen," with "The Shepherd's Calendar," 
and many more verses besides — did, in the mind of my 
young friend, excite a very different and quite modern 
idea ; namely, that of the Honorable William Spencer, 
one of the living ornaments, if I am not misinformed, 
of this present poetical era, A.D. 1811. 



ELIA ON "CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD." 161 



ELLA OX HIS "CONFESSIONS OF A 
DRUNKAKD."* 

"NT ant are the sayings of Elia, painful and frequent 
his lucubrations, set forth for the most part (such his 
modesty ! ) without a name ; scattered about in obscure 
periodicals and forgotten miscellanies. From the dust 
of some of these it is our intention occasionally to 
revive a tract or two that shall seem worthy of a better 
fate, especially at a time like the present, when the pen 
of our industrious contributor, engaged in a laborious 

* From the u London Magazine," 1822. 

Willis, in his M Pencillings by the Way," describing his interview with 
Charles and Mary Lamb, says, " Nothing could be more delightful than the 
kindness and affection between the brother and the sister ; though Lamb was 
continually taking advantage of her deafness to mystify her with the most 
singular gravity upon every topic that was started. ' Poor Mary ! ' said he : 
4 she hears all of an epigram but the point.' — ' What are you saying of me, 
Charles '? ' she asked. ' Mr. Willis,' said he, raising his voice, ' admires 
your u Confessions of a Drunkard " very much, and I was saying it was no 
merit of yours that you understood the subject.' We had been speaking of 
this admirable essay (which is his own) half an hour before." 

That essay has been strangely and purposely misunderstood. Elia, albeit 
he loved the cheerful glass, was not a drunkard. The " poor nameless 
egotist" of the Confessions is not Charles Lamb. In printing the article in 
the " London Magazine " (it was originally contributed to a collection of 
tracts published by Basil Montagu), Elia introduced it to the readers of that 
periodical in the above explanatory paragraphs. They should be printed 
in all editions of Elia as a note to the article they explain and comment 
r many persons, like the writer in the London " Quarterly Review," 
believe, or profess to believe, that this "fearful picture of the conse- 
quences of intemperance " is a true tale. " How far it was from actual 
truth," says Talfourd, "the Essays of Elia, the production of a later day, in 
which the maturity of his feeling, humor, and reason, is exhibited, may suffi- 
ciently show." — Editor. 

11 



162 ELIA ON " CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD." 

digest of his recent Continental tour, may haply want 
the leisure to expatiate in more miscellaneous specu- 
lations. We have been induced, in the first instance, 
to reprint a thing which he put forth in a friend's vol- 
ume some years since,, entitled " The Confessions of 
a Drunkard," seeing that Messieurs the Quarterly Re- 
viewers have chosen to embellish their last dry pages 
with fruitful quotations therefrom ; adding, from their 
peculiar brains, the gratuitous affirmation, that they 
have reason to believe that the describer (in his deline- 
ations of a drunkard, forsooth !) partly sat for his own 
picture. The truth is, that our friend had been reading 
among the essays of a contemporary, who has per- 
versely been confounded with him, a paper in which 
Edax (or the Great Eater) humorously complaineth of 
an inordinate appetite ; and it struck him that a bet- 
ter paper — of deeper interest and wider usefulness — 
might be made out of the imagined experiences of a 
Great Drinker. Accordingly he set to work, and, with 
that mock fervor and counterfeit earnestness with which 
he is too apt to over-realize his descriptions, has given 
us — a frightful picture indeed, but no more resembling 
the man Elia than the fictitious Edax may be supposed 
to identify itself with Mr. L., its author. It is, in- 
deed, a compound extracted out of his long observations 
of the effects of drinking upon all the world about him ; 
and this accumulated mass of misery he hath centred 
(as the custom is with judicious essayists) in a single 
figure. We deny not that a portion of his own experi- 
ences may have passed into the picture ; (as who, that 
is not a washy fellow, but must at some times have felt 
the after-operation of a too-generous cup?) but then 



THE LAST PEACH. 163 

how heightened ! how exaggerated ! how little within 
the sense of the Review, where a part, in their slander- 
ous usage, must be understood to stand for the whole ! 
But it is useless to expostulate with this Quarterly slime, 
brood of Nilus, watery heads with hearts of jelly, 
spawned under the sign of Aquarius, incapable of 
Bacchus, and therefore cold, washy, spiteful, bloodless. 
Elia shall string them up one day, and show their 
colors, — or, rather, how colorless and vapid the whole 
fry, — when he putteth forth his long-promised, but un- 
accountably hitherto delayed, " Confessions of a Water- 
drinker." 



THE LAST PEACH* 

I am the miserablest man living. Give me counsel, 
dear Editor. I was bred up in the strictest principles 
of honesty, and have passed my life in punctual adhe- 
rence to them. Integrity might be said to be ingrained 
in our family. Yet I live in constant fear of one day 
coming to the gallows. 

Till the latter end of last autumn, I never experi- 
enced these feelings of self-mistrust, which ever since 
have imbittered my existence. From the apprehension 
of that unfortunate man,f whose story began to make 
so great an impression upon the public about that time, 
I date my horrors. I never can get it out of my head 

* From the "London Magazine," 1825. 
f Fauntleroy. 



164 THE LAST PEACH. 

that I shall some time or other commit a forgery, or do 
some equally vile thing. To make matters worse, I 
am in a banking-house. I sit surrounded with a cluster 
of bank-notes. These were formerly no more to me 
than meat to a butcher's dog. They are now as toads 
and aspics. I feel all day like one situated amidst gins 
and pitfalls. Sovereigns, which I once took such pleas- 
ure in counting out, and scraping up with my little tin 
shovel (at which I was the most expert in the banking- 
house), now scald my hands. When I go to sign my 
name, I set down that of another person, or write my 
own in a counterfeit character. I am beset with tempta- 
tions without motive. I want no more wealth than I 
possess. A more contended being than myself, as to 
money matters, exists not. What should I fear? 

When a child, I was once let loose, by favor of a 
nobleman's gardener, into his lordship's magnificent 
fruit-garden, with full leave to pull the currants and the 
gooseberries ; only I was interdicted from touching the 
wall-fruit.* Indeed, at that season (it was the end 

* This garden belonged to " Blakesmoor," the fine old family mansion 
of the Plummers of Hertfordshire, in whose family Lamb's maternal grand- 
mother — the "grandame" of his poem of that name, and the "great- 
grandmother Field" of Elia's" Dream Children" — was housekeeper for 
many years. 

About this great house, where he passed so many happy holidays when a 
boy, and of which he writes so beautifully in two of the Essays of Elia, Lamb 
thus speaks in one of his letters to Barton : — 

"You have well described your old, fashionable, grand, paternal hall. 
Is it not odd that every one's earliest recollections are of some such place ? 
I had my Blakesware (Blakesmoor in the ' London '). Nothing fills a child's 
mind like a large old mansion : better if un — or partially — occupied, peo- 
pled with the spirits of deceased members for the county, and justices of the 
quorum. Would I were buried in the peopled solitude of one, with my 
feelings at seven years old! Those marble busts of the emperors — they 
seemed as if they were to stand for ever, as they had stood from the living 



THE LAST PEACH. 165 

of autumn) , there was little left. Only on the south 
wall (can I forget the hot feel of the brick-work?) 
lingered the one last peach. Now, peaches are a fruit 
which I always had, and still have, an almost utter 
aversion to. There is something to my palate singu- 
larly harsh and repulsive in the flavor of them. I know 
not by what demon of contradiction inspired ; but I was 
haunted with an irresistible desire to pluck it. Tear 
myself as often as I would from the spot, I found my- 
self still recurring to it ; till, maddening with desire 
(desire I cannot call it) , with wilfulness rather, — with- 
out appetite, — against appetite, I may call it, — in ah 
evil hour I reached out my hand, and plucked it. Some 
few raindrops just then fell ; the sky (from a bright 
day) became overcast ; and I was a type of our first 
parents, after the eating of that fatal fruit. I felt my- 
self naked and ashamed, stripped of my virtue, spiritless. 
The downy fruit, whose sight rather than savor had 
tempted me, dropped from my hand, never to be tasted. 
All the commentators in the world cannot persuade me 
but that the Hebrew word, in the second chapter of 
Genesis, translated "apple," should be rendered "peach." 
Only this way can I reconcile that mysterious story. 

Just such a child at thirty am I among the cash and 
valuables, longing to pluck, without an idea of enjoy- 
ment further. I cannot reason myself out of these 
fears : I dare not laugh at them. I was tenderly and 

ages of Rome, in that old marble hall, and I to partake of their permanency. 
Eternity was, while I thought not of Time. But he thought of me, and they 
are toppled down, and corn covers the spot of the noble old dwelling and its 
princely gardens. I feel like a grasshopper, that, chirping about the ground, 
escapes his scythe only by my littleness. Even now he is whetting one of his 
smallest razors to clean wipe me out, perhaps. Well! " — Editor. 



166 THE LAST PEACH. 

lovingly brought up. What then? Who that in life's 
entrance had seen the babe F , from the lap stretch- 
ing out his little fond mouth to catch the maternal kiss, 
could have predicted, or as much as imagined, that life's 
very different exit? The sight of my own fingers tor- 
ments me; they seem so admirably constructed for — 
pilfering. Then that jugular vein, which I have in 

common ; in an emphatic sense may I say with 

David, I am "fearfully made." All my mirth is poi- 
soned by these unhappy suggestions. If, to dissipate re- 
flection, I hum a tune, it changes to the " Lamentations 
of a Sinner." My very dreams are tainted. I awake 
with a shocking feeling of my hand in some pocket. 

Advise me, dear Editor, on this painful heart-malady. 
Tell me, do you feel any thing allied to it in yourself? 
Do you never feel an itching, as it were, — a dactylo- 
mania, — or am I alone? You have my honest confes- 
sion. My next may appear from Bow Street. 

SuSPENSURUS.* 



* The day after the execution of Fauntleroy, and some months before 
the publication of this little sketch, Lamb thus solemnly, yet humorously 
withal, writes to the Quaker poet: "And now, my dear sir, trifling apart, 
the gloomy catastrophe of yesterday morning prompts a sadder vein. The 
fate of the unfortunate Fauntleroy makes me, whether I will or no, to cast 
reflecting eyes around on such of my friends, as, by a parity of situation, are 
exposed to a similarity of temptation. My very style seems to myself to 
become more impressive than usual with the charge of them. Who that 
standeth knoweth but he may yet fall ? Your hands as yet, I am most will- 
ing to believe, have never deviated into others' property. You think it 
impossible that you could ever commit so heinous an offence: but so 
thought Fauntleroy once ; so have thought many besides him, who at last 
have expiated as he hath done. You are as yet upright; but you are 
a banker, or, at least, the next thing to it. I feel the delicacy of the sub- 
ject; but cash must pass through your hands, sometimes to a great amount. 
If in an unguarded hour — but I will hope better. Consider the scandal it 
will bring upon those of your persuasion ! Thousands would go to see 



REFLECTIONS IN THE PILLORY. 167 



EEFLECTIONS IN THE PILLOKY.* 



About the year 18 — , one R d, a respectable London merchant (since 

dead), stood in the pillory for some alleged fraud upon the revenue. 
Among his papers were found the following "Reflections," which we have 
obtained by favor of our friend Elia, who knew him well, and had heard 
him describe the train of his feelings, upon that trying occasion, almost in 
the words of the manuscript. Elia speaks of him as a man (with the excep- 
tion of the peccadillo aforesaid) of singular integrity in all his private deal- 
ings, possessing great suavity of manner, with a certain turn for humor. As 
our object is to present human nature under every possible circumstance, we 
do not think that we shall sully our pages by inserting it. — Editor of 
"London Magazine." 



Scene, — Opposite the Royal Exchange. 
Time, — Twelve to one, noon. 



Ketch, my good fellow, you have a neat hand. 
Prithee, adjust this new collar to my neck gingerly. 
I am not used to these wooden cravats. There, softly, 
softly. That seems the exact point between ornament 
and strangulation. A thought looser on this side. 
Now it will do. And have a care in turning me, 

a Quaker hanged that would be indifferent to the fate of a Presbyterian 
or an Anabaptist. Think of the effect it would have on the sale of 
your poems alone, not to mention higher considerations ! I tremble, I am 
sure, at myself, when I think that so many poor victims of the law, at 
one time of their life, made as sure of never being hanged, as I, in my own 
presumption, am ready, too ready, to do myself. What are we better 
than they ? Do we come into the world with different necks ? Is there 
any distinctive mark under our left ears ? Are we unstrangulable, I ask 
you ? Think on these things. I am shocked sometimes at the shape of my 
own fingers ; not for their resemblance to the ape tribe (which is something), 
but for the exquisite adaptation of them to the purposes of picking, finger- 
ing, &c." — Editor. 

* From the " London Magazine," 1825. 



168 REFLECTIONS IN THE PILLORY. 

that I present my aspect due vertically. I now face the 
orient. In a quarter of an hour I shift southward, — 
do you mind? — and so on till I face the east again, 
travelling with the sun. No half-points, I beseech 
you, — N. N. by W., or any such elaborate niceties. 
They become the shipman's card, but not this mystery. 
Now leave me a little to my own reflections. 

Bless us, what a company is assembled in honor of 
me ! How grand I stand here ! I never felt so sensi- 
bly before the effect of solitude in a crowd. I muse in 
solemn silence upon that vast miscellaneous rabble in 
the pit there. From my private box, I contemplate, 
with mingled pity and wonder, the gaping curiosity of 
those underlings. There are my Whitechapel support- 
ers. Rosemary Lane has emptied herself of the very 
flower of her citizens to grace my show. Duke's place 
sits desolate. What is there in my face, that strangers 
should come so far from the east to gaze upon it? 
\_Here an egg narrowly misses him.~\ That offering was 
well meant, but not so cleanly executed. By the trick- 
lings, it should not be either myrrh or frankincense. 
Spare your presents, my friends : I am noways mer- 
cenary. I desire no missive tokens of your approba- 
tion. I am past those valentines. Bestow these coffins 
of untimely chickens upon mouths that water for them. 
Comfort your addle spouses with them at home, and stop 
the mouths of your brawling brats with such Olla Podri- 
das : they have need of them. [A. brick is let fly.~\ 
Disease not, I pray you, nor dismantle your rent and 
ragged tenements, to furnish me with architectural dec- 
orations, which I can excuse. This fragment might 
have stopped a flaw against snow comes. \_A coal flies. .] 



REFLECTIONS IN THE PILLORY. 169 

Cinders are dear, gentlemen. This nubbling might 
have helped the pot boil , when your dirty cuttings from 
the shambles at three-ha'pence a pound shall stand at a 
cold simmer. Now, south about, Ketch. I would 
enjoy Australian popularity. 

What, my friends from over the water ! Old bench- 
ers — flies of a day — ephemeral Romans — welcome ! 
Doth the sight of me draw souls from limbo? can it 
dispeople purgatory ? — Ha 1 

What am I, or what was my father's house, that I 
should thus be set up a spectacle to gentlemen and 
others? Why are all faces, like Persians at the sunrise, 
bent singly on mine alone ? It was wont to be esteemed 
an ordinary visnomy, a quotidian merely. Doubtless 
these assembled myriads discern some traits of nobleness, 
gentility, breeding, which hitherto have escaped the com- 
mon observation, — some intimations, as it were, of 
wisdom, valor, piety, and so forth. My sight dazzles ; 
and, if I am not deceived by the too-familiar pressure 
of this strange neckcloth that envelops it, my counte- 
nance gives out lambent glories. For some painter now 
to take me in the lucky point of expression ! — the pos- 
ture so convenient ! — the head never shifting, but stand- 
ing quiescent in a sort of natural frame ! But these 
artisans require a westerly aspect. Ketch, turn me. 

Something of St. James's air in these my new friends. 
How my prospects shift and brighten ! Now, if Sir 
Thomas Lawrence be anywhere in that group, his 
fortune is made for ever. I think I see some one taking 
out a crayon. I will compose my whole face to a smile, 
which yet shall not so predominate but that gravity 
and gayety shall contend, as it were, — you understand 



170 REFLECTIONS IN THE PILLORY. 

me ? I will work up my thoughts to some mild rapture, 
— a gentle enthusiasm, — which the artist may transfer, 
in a manner, warm to the canvas. I will inwardly apos- 
trophize my tabernacle. 

Delectable mansion, hail ! House not made of every 
wood ! Lodging that pays no rent ; airy and commo- 
dious ; which, owing no window -tax, art yet all case 
ment, out of which men have such pleasure in peering 
and overlooking, that they will sometimes stand an hour 
together to enjoy thy prospects ! Cell, recluse from 
the vulgar ! Quiet retirement from the great Babel, 
yet affording sufficient glimpses into it ! Pulpit, that 
instructs without note or sermon-book; into which 
the preacher is inducted without tenth or first -fruit ! 
Throne, unshared and single, that disdainest a Brent- 
ford competitor ! Honor without co-rival ! Or hearest 
thou, rather, magnificent theatre, in which the spectator 
comes to see and to be seen ? From thy giddy heights I 
look down upon the common herd, who stand with eyes 
upturned, as if a winged messenger hovered over them ; 
and mouths open, as if they expected manna. I feel, I 
feel, the true episcopal yearnings. Behold in me, my 
flock, your true overseer ! What though I cannot lay 
hands, because my own are laid ; yet I can mutter bene- 
dictions. True otium cum dignitate ! Proud Pisgah 
eminence ! pinnacle sublime ! O Pillory ! 'tis thee I 
sing ! Thou younger brother to the gallows, without 
his rough and Esau palms, that with ineffable con- 
tempt surveyest beneath thee the grovelling stocks, 
which claims presumptuously to be of thy great race ! 
Let that low wood know that thou art far higher born. 
Let that domicile for groundling rogues and base earth- 



REFLECTIONS IN THE PILLORY. 171 

kissing varlets envy thy preferment, not seldom fated 
to be the wanton baiting-house, the temporary retreat, 
of poet and of patriot. Shades of Bast wick and of 
Prynne hover over thee, — Defoe is there, and more 
greatly daring Shebbeare, — from their (little more ele- 
vated) stations they look down with recognitions. 
Ketch, turn me. 

I now veer to the north. Open your widest gates, 
thou proud Exchange of London, that I may look in 
as proudly ! Gresham's wonder, hail ! I stand upon 
a level with all your kings. They and I, from equal 
heights, with equal superciliousness, o'erlook the plod- 
ding money-hunting tribe below, who, busied in their 
sordid speculations, scarce elevate their eyes to notice 
your ancient, or my recent, grandeur. The second 
Charles smiles on me from three pedestals ! * He 
closed the Exchequer : I cheated the Excise. Equal 
our darings, equal be our lot. 

Are those the quarters? 'tis their fatal chime. That 
the ever-winged hours would but stand still ! but I 
must descend, — descend from this dream of greatness. 
Stay, stay, a little while, importunate hour-hand ! A 
moment or two, and I shall walk on foot with the un- 
distinguished many. The clock speaks one. I return 
to common life. Ketch, let me out. 

* A statue of Charles II., by the elder Cibber, adorns the front of the 
Exchange. He stands also on high, in the train of his crowned ancestors, 
in his proper order, within that building. But the merchants of London, in 
a superfetation of loyalty, have, within a few years, caused to be erected 
another effigy of him on the ground in the centre of the interior. We do 
not hear that a fourth is in contemplation. 



172 A SATURDAY'S DINNER. 



A SATURDAY'S DINNER.* 

" When a man keeps a constant table, he may be allowed sometimes to 
serve up a cold dish of meat, or toss up the fragments of a feast into a ragout. 
I have sometimes, in a scarcity of provisions, been obliged to take the same 
kind of liberty, and to entertain my reader with the leavings of a former 
treat. I must this day have recourse to the same method, and beg my 
guests to sit down to a kind of Saturday's dinner." — Tatler, No. 258. 

The different way in which the same story may be 
told by different persons was never more strikingly 
illustrated than by the manner in which the celebrated 
Jeremy Collier has described the effects of Timotheus' 
music upon Alexander, in the second part of his Essays. 
We all know how Dryden has treated the subject. Let 
us now hear his great contemporary and antagonist : 
Timotheus, a Grecian," says Collier, "was so great a 
master, that he could make a man storm and swagger 
like a tempest ; and then, by altering the notes and the 
time, he could take him down again, and sweeten his 
humor in a trice. One time, when Alexander was at 
dinner, the man played him a Phrygian air. The prince 
immediately rises, snatches up his lance, and puts him- 
self into a posture of fighting ; and the retreat was no 

* Under this heading, I have placed sundry scraps and fragments of 
Lamb's inditing, which are too short to be printed in distinct chapters, and 
too good (I think) to be left out of this collection. Mr. Moxon says that 
Elia had a strong aversion to roast beef and to fowl, and to any wines but 
port or sherry. " Tripe and cow-heel were to him delicacies, — rare dain- 
ties ! " And I suspect, that, to a true lover of Lamb, our " Saturday's Din- 
ner" will be better and more satisfactory than the costly and splendid 
banquets of some of the popular and fashionable literary caterers of the 
day. — Editor. 



A SATURDAY'S DINNER. 173 

sooner sounded by the change of the harmony, but his 
arms were grounded, and his fire extinct ; and he sat 
down as orderly as if he had come from one of Aristo- 
tle's lectures. I warrant you, Demosthenes would have 
been flourishing about such business a long hour, and 
may be not have done it neither. But Timotheus had 
a nearer cut to the soul : he could neck a passion at a 
stroke, and lay it asleep. Pythagoras once met with 
a parcel of drunken fellows, who were likely to be trou- 
blesome enough. He presently orders music to play 
grave, and chops into a Dorian. Upon this they all 
threw away their garlands, and were as sober and as 
shame-faced as one would wish." It is evident that 
Dry den in his inspired ode, and Collier in all this pud- 
der of prose, meant the same thing. But what a work 
does the latter make with his " necking a passion at his 
stroke," " making a man storm and swagger like a 
tempest," and then "taking him down, and sweeting his 
humor in a trice " ! What in Dryden is " softly sweet 
in Lydian measures," Collier calls " chopping into a 
Dorian." This Collier was the same, who, in his Bio- 
graphical Dictionary, says of Shakspeare, that "though 
his genius generally was jocular, and inclining to festivi- 
ty, yet he could when he pleased he as serious as anybody." 

Oh the comfort of sitting down heartily to an old folio, 
and thinking surely that the next hour or two will be 
your own ! — and the misery of being defeated by the 
useless call of somebody, who is come to tell you that 
he has just come from hearing Mr. Irving ! What is 
that to you? Let him go home, and digest what the 
good man has said. You are at your chapel, in your 
oratory. 



174 A SATURDAY'S DINNER. 

My friend Hume (not M.P.) has a curious manu- 
script in his possession, the original draught of the cele- 
brated "Beggar's Petition," (who cannot say by heart 
the " Beggar's Petition" ? ) as it was written by some 
school-usher (as I remember), with corrections inter- 
lined from the pen of Oliver Goldsmith. As a speci- 
men of the doctor's improvement, I recollect one most 
judicious alteration : — 

" A pampered menial drove me from the door." 
It stood originally, — 

" A livery servant drove me," &c. 

Here is an instance of poetical or artificial language 
properly substituted for the phrase of common conver- 
sation ; against Wordsworth. 

There is something to me repugnant, at any time, in 
a written hand. The text never seems determinate. 
Print settles it. I had thought of the " Lycidas " as of 
a full-grown beauty, — as springing up with all its parts 
absolute, — till, in an evil hour, I was shown the origi- 
nal copy of it, together with the other minor poems of 
its author, in the library of Trinity, kept like something 
to be proud of. I wish they had thrown them in the 
Cam, or sent them, after the latter cantos of Spenser, 
into the Irish Channel. How it staggered me to see the 
fine things in their ore ! — interlined, corrected, as if their 
words were mortal, alterable, displaceable at pleasure ; 
as if they might have been otherwise, and just as good ; 
as if inspiration were made up of parts, and those fluc- 
tuating, successive, indifferent ! I will never go into 
the workshop of any great artist again, nor desire a 



A SATURDAY'S DINNER. 175 

sight of his picture, till it is fairly off the easel ; no, not 
if Raphael were to be alive again, and painting another 
Galatea. 

Our ancestors, the noble old Puritans of Cromwell's 
day, could distinguish between a day of religious rest 
and a day of recreation ; and while they exacted a 
vigorous abstinence from all amusements (even to 
walking out of nursery-maids with their charges in the 
fields) upon the sabbath, in lieu of the superstitious 
observance of the saints' days, which they abrogated, 
they humanely gave to the apprentices and poorer sort 
of people every alternate Thursday for a day of entire 
sport and recreation. A strain of piety and policy to 
be commended above the profane mockery of the Stu- 
arts and their w Book of Sports." 

I was once amused — there is a pleasure in affecting 
affectation — at the indignation of a crowd that was 
justling in with me at the pit-door of Covent-Garden 
Theatre to have a sight of Master Betty — then at once 
in his dawn and his meridian — in Hamlet. I had been 
invited quite unexpectedly to join a party whom I met 
near the door of the play-house ; and I happened to 
have in rny hand a large octavo of Johnson and Stee- 
ven's "Shakspeare," which, the time not admitting of my 
carrying it home, of course went with me to the thea- 
tre. Just in the very heat and pressure of the doors 
opening, — the rush, as they term it, — I deliberately 
held the volume over my head, open at the scene in which 
the young Roscius had been most cried up, and quietly 
read by the lamplight. The clamor became universal. 



176 A SATURDAY'S DINNER. 

" The affectation of the fellow ! " cried one. M Look at 
that gentleman reading, papa !" squeaked a young lady, 
who, in her admiration of the novelty, almost forgot her 
fears. I read on. " He ought to have his book knocked 
out of his hand ! " exclaimed a pursy cit, whose arms 
were too fast pinioned to his side to suffer him to execute 
his kind intention. Still I read on, and, till the time 
came to pay my money, kept as unmoved as Saint 
Anthony at his holy offices, with the satyrs, apes, and 
hobgoblins moping, and making mouths at him, in the 
picture ; while the good man sits as undisturbed at the 
sight as as if he were sole tenant of the desert. The 
individual rabble (I recognized more than one of their 
ugly faces) had damned a slight piece of mine but a few 
nights since ; and I was determined the culprits should 
not a second time put me out of countenance. 

Samuel Johnson, whom, to distinguish from the doc- 
tor, we may call the Whig, was a very remarkable writer. 
He may be compared to his contemporary, Dr. Fox, 
whom he resembled in many points. He is another 
instance of King William's discrimination, which was so 
superior to that of any of his ministers. Johnson was 
one of the most formidable of the advocates for the Ex- 
clusion Bill ; and he suffered by whipping and imprison- 
ment under James accordingly. Like Asgill, he argues 
with great apparent candor and clearness till he gets his 
opponent within reach ; and then comes a blow as from 
a sledge-hammer. I do not know where I could put my 
hand on a book containing so much sense and constitu- 
tional doctrine as this thin folio of Johnson's Works ; 
and what party in this country would read so severe a lee- 



A SATURDAY'S DINNER. 177 

ture in it as our modern Whigs ? A close reasoner and 
a good writer in general may be known by his pertinent 
use of connections. Bead any page of Johnson, you 
cannot alter one conjunction without spoiling the sense : 
it is a linked chain throughout. In your modern books, 
for the most part, the sentences in a page have the same 
connection with each other that marbles have in a bag : 
they touch without adhering.* 

We are too apt to indemnify ourselves for some char- 
acteristic excellence we are kind enough to concede to a 
great author by denying him every thing else. Thus 
Donne and Cowley, by happening to possess more wit, 
and faculty of illustration, than other men, are supposed 
to have been incapable of nature or feeling : they are 
usually opposed to such writers as Shenstone and Par- 
nell ; whereas, in the very thickest of their conceits, — 
in the bewildering mazes of tropes and figures, — a 
warmth of soul and generous feeling shines through, 
the " sum " of which, " forty thousand " of those natural 
poets, as they are called, " with all their quantity," could 
not make up. 

D.f commenced life, after a course of hard study, in 
the "House of pure Emanuel," as usher to a kna- 
vish, fanatic schoolmaster at , at a salary of eight 

pounds per annum, with board and lodging. Of this 
poor stipend he never received above half in all the 
laborious years he served this man. He tells a plea- 

* This criticism was written by Lamb on the fly-leaf of his copy of 
"The Works of Mr. Samuel Johnson." — Editor. 
t George Dyer. 

12 



178 A SATURDAY'S DINNER. 

sant anecdote, that when poverty, staring out at his 
ragged knees, has sometimes compelled him, against 
the modesty of his nature, to hint at arrears, Dr. 
would take no immediate notice ; but after sup- 
per, when the school was called together to even-song, 
he would never fail to introduce some instructive homily 
against riches, and the corruption of the heart occa- 
sioned through the desire of them, — ending with, 
"Lord, keep thy servants, above all things, from the 
heinous sin of avarice. Having food and raiment, let 
us therewithal be content. Give me Agur's wish," — 
and the like, — which, to the little auditory, sounded 
like a doctrine full of Christian prudence and simplicity, 
but, to poor D., was a receipt in full for that quarter's 
demands at least. 

And D. has been under-working for himself ever 
since, — drudging at low rates for unappreciating book- 
sellers, — wasting his fine erudition in silent corrections 
of the classics, and in those unostentatious but solid 
services to learning which commonly fall to the lot of 
laborious scholars who have not the art to sell themselves 
to the best advantage. He has published poems which 
do not sell, because their character is inobtrusive, like 
his own ; and because he has been too much absorbed 
in ancient literature to know what the popular mark in 
poetry is, even if he could have hit it. And therefore 
his verses are properly what he terms them, — crotchets; 
voluntaries ; odes to Liberty and Spring ; effusions ; 
little tributes and offerings, left behind him upon tables 
and window-seats, at parting from friends' houses, and 
from all the inns of hospitality, where he has been 
courteously (or but tolerably) received in his pilgrim- 



A SATURDAY'S DINNER. 179 

age. If his Muse of kindness halt a little behind the 
strong lines, in fashion in this excitement-craving age, 
his prose is the best of the sort in the world, and 
exhibits a faithful transcript of his own healthy, natural 
mind, and cheerful, innocent tone of conversation. 

" Pray God, your honor relieve me," said a poor 

beads-woman to my friend L one day : " I have 

seen better days." — " So have I, my good woman," re- 
torted he, looking up at the welkin, which was just 
then threatening a storm ; and the jest (he will have it) 
was as good to the beggar as a tester. 

It was, at all events, kinder than consigning her to the 
stocks or the parish beadle. 

But L has a way of viewing things in a para- 
doxical light on some occasions. 

I have in my possession a curious volume of Latin 
verses, which I believe to be unique. It is entitled, 
Alexandri Fultoni Scoti Ejpigrammatorum libri quinque. 
It purports to be printed at Perth, and bears date 
1679. By the appellation which the author gives him- 
self in the preface, hypodidasculus , I suppose him to have 
been an usher at some school. It is no uncommon 
thing now-a-days for persons concerned in academies 
to affect a literary reputation in the way of their trade. 
The w master of a seminary for a limited number of 
pupils at Islington " lately put forth an edition of that 
scarce tract, " The Elegy in a Country Churchyard " (to 
use his own words) , with notes and head-lines ! But 
to our author. These epigrams of Alexander Fulton, 
Scotchman, have little remarkable in them besides ex- 






180 A SATURDAY'S DINNER. 

treme dulness and insipidity ; but there is one, which, 
by its being marshalled in the front of the volume, 
seems to have been the darling of its parent, and for its 
exquisite flatness, and the surprising strokes of an anach- 
ronism with which it is pointed, deserves to be rescued 
from oblivion. It is addressed, like many of the others, 
to a fair one : — 

AD MARIULAM SUAM AUTOR. 

" Moserunt bella olim Helenas decor atque venustas 
Europen inter frugifer amque Asiam. 
Tarn bona, quam tu, tam prudens, sin ilia fuisset, 
Ad lites issent Africa et America ! " 

Which, in humble imitation of mine author's peculiar 
poverty of style, I have ventured thus to render into 
English : — 

THE AUTHOR TO HIS MOGGY. 

" For Love's illustrious cause, and Helen's charms, 
All Europe and all Asia rushed to arms. 
Had she with these thy polished sense combined, 
All Afric and America had joined! " 

The happy idea of an American war undertaken in 
the cause of beauty ought certainly to recommend the 
author's memory to the countrymen of Madison and 
Jefferson ; and the bold anticipation of the discovery of 
that continent in the time of the Trojan War is a flight 
beyond the Sibyl's books. 



A CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELIA. 181 



A CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELIA* 

BY A FRIEND. 

This gentleman, who for some months past had been 
in a declining way, hath at length paid his final tribute 
to nature. He just lived long enough (it was what 
he wished) to see his papers collected into a vol- 
ume. The pages of the " London Magazine " will 
henceforth know him no more. 

Exactly at twelve last night, his queer spirit depart- 
ed ; and the bells of Saint Bride's rang him out with 
the old year. The mournful vibrations were caught in 
the dining-room of his friends T. and H. ; f and the 
company, assembled there to welcome in another 1st 
of January, checked their carousals in mid-mirth, and 

were silent. Janus wept. The gentle P r,J in a 

whisper, signified his intention of devoting an elegy ; 
and Allan C.,§ nobly forgetful of his countrymen's 
wrongs, vowed a memoir to his manes full and friendly 
as a " Tale of Lyddalcross." 

To say truth, it is time he were gone. The humor 
of the thing, if there was ever much in it, was pretty 
well exhausted ; and a two years' and a half existence 
has been a tolerable duration for a phantom. 

* From the " London Magazine," 1823. A part of this article was re- 
published by its author as a preface to "The Last Essays of Elia." — 
Editor. 

f Taylor and Hessey, the publishers of the " London Magazine." 

t Proctor, better known as Barry Cornwall. 

§ Cunningham. 



182 A CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELIA. 

I am now at liberty to confess, that much which I 
have heard objected to my late friend's writings was 
well founded. Crude they are, I grant you, — a sort 
of unlicked, incondite things, — villanously pranked 
in an affected array of antique modes and phrases. 
They had not been his if they had been other than 
such ; and better it is that a writer should be natural 
in a self-pleasing quaintness, than to affect a natural- 
ness (so called) that should be strange to him. Ego- 
tistical they have been pronounced by some who did 
not know that what he tells us as of himself was 
often true only (historically) of another ; as in his 
Third Essay (to save many instances), where, un- 
der the first person (his favorite figure), he shadows 
forth the forlorn estate of a country boy placed at a 
London school, far from his friends and connections, — 
in direct opposition to his own early history. If it be 
egotism to imply and twine with his own identity the 
griefs and affections of another, — making himself 
many, or reducing many unto himself, — then is the 
skilful novelist, who all along brings in his hero or 
heroine, speaking of themselves, the greatest egotist of 
all ; who yet has never, therefore, been accused of that 
narrowness. And how shall the intenser dramatist es- 
cape being faulty, who doubtless, under cover of passion 
uttered by another, oftentimes gives blameless vent to 
his most inward feelings, and expresses his own story 
modestly ? 

My late friend was in many respects a singular char- 
acter. Those who did not like him hated him ; and 
some, who once liked him, afterwards became his bit- 
terest haters. The truth is, he gave himself too little 



A CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELIA. 183 

concern what he uttered, and in whose presence. He 
observed neither time nor place, and would even out 
with what came uppermost. With the severe religionist 
he would pass for a free-thinker ; while the other faction 
set him down for a bigot, or persuaded themselves that 
he belied his sentiments. Few understood him ; and I 
am not certain that at all times he quite understood 
himself. He too much affected that dangerous figure, — 
irony. He sowed doubtful speeches, and reaped plain, 
unequivocal hatred. He would interrupt the gravest 
discussion with some light jest; and yet, perhaps, not 
quite irrelevant in ears that could understand it. Your 
long and much talkers hated him. The informal habit 
of his mind, joined to an inveterate impediment of 
speech, forbade him to be an orator ; and he seemed 
determined that no one else should play that part when 
he was present. He was petit and ordinary in his per- 
son and appearance. I have seen him sometimes in 
what is called good company, but, where he has been a 
stranger, sit silent, and be suspected for an odd fellow ; 
till, some unlucky occasion provoking it, he would stutter 
out some senseless pun (not altogether senseless perhaps, 
if rightly taken) , which has stamped his character for 
the evening. It was hit or miss with him ; but, nine 
times out of ten, he contrived by this device to send 
away a whole company his enemies. His conceptions 
rose kindlier than his utterance, and his happiest im- 
promptus had the appearance of effort. He has been 
accused of trying to be witty, when in truth he was but 
struggling to give his poor thoughts articulation. He 
chose his companions for some individuality of character 
which they manifested. Hence not many persons of 



184 A CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELIA. 

science, and few professed literati, were of his councils. 
They were, for the most part, persons of an uncertain 
fortune ; and, as to such people commonly nothing is 
more obnoxious than a gentleman of settled (though 
moderate) income, he passed with most of them for a 
great miser. To my knowledge, this was a mistake. 
His intimados, to confess a truth, were, in the world's 
eye, a ragged regiment. He found them floating on the 
surface of society ; and the color, or something else, in 
the weed, pleased him. The burrs stuck to him ; but 
they were good and loving burrs for all that. He never 
greatly cared for the society of what are called good 
people. If any of these were scandalized (and of- 
fences were sure to arise) , he could not help it. When 
he has been remonstrated with for not making more 
concessions to the feelings of good people, he would 
retort by asking, What one point did these good people 
ever concede to him? He was temperate in his meals 
and diversions, but always kept a little on this side of 
abstemiousness. Only in the use of the Indian weed 
he might be thought a little excessive. He took it, he 
would say, as a solvent of speech. Marry — as the 
friendly vapor ascended, how his prattle would curl 
up sometimes with it ! the ligaments, which tongue-tied 
him, were loosened, and the stammerer proceeded a 
statist ! 

I do not know whether I ought to bemoan or rejoice 
that my old friend is departed. His jests were begin- 
ning to grow obsolete, and his stories to be found out. 
He felt the approaches of age ; and , while he pretended 
to cling to life, you saw how slender were the ties left to 
bind him. Discoursing with him latterly on this sub- 



A CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELIA. 185 

ject, he expressed himself with a pettishness which I 
thought unworthy of him. In our walks about his 
suburban retreat (as he called it) at Shacklewell, some 
children belonging to a school of industry had met us, 
and bowed and courtesied, as he thought, in an especial 
manner to him. " They take me for a visiting govern- 
or," he muttered earnestly. He had a horror, which he 
carried to a foible, of looking like any thing important 
and parochial. He thought that he approached nearer 
to that stamp daily. He had a general aversion from 
being treated like a grave or respectable character, and 
kept a wary eye upon the advances of age that should 
so entitle him. He herded always, while it was pos- 
sible, with people younger than himself. He did not 
conform to the march of time, but was dragged along 
in the procession. His manners lagged behind his 
years. He was too much of the boy-man. The toga 
virilis never sat gracefully on his shoulders. The im- 
pressions of infancy had burnt into him, and he resented 
the impertinence of manhood. These were weaknesses ; 
but, such as they were, they are a key to explicate some 
of his writings. 

He left little property behind him. Of course, the 
little that is left (chiefly in India bonds) devolves upon 
his cousin Bridget. A few critical dissertations were 
found in his escritoire, which have been handed over to 
the editor of this magazine, in which it is to be hoped 
they will shortly appear, retaining his accustomed sig- 
nature. 

He has himself not obscurely hinted that his employ- 
ment lay in a public office. The gentlemen in the 
export-department of the East-India House will forgive 



186 A CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELIA. 

me if I acknowledge the readiness with which they 
assisted me in the retrieval of his few manuscripts. 
They pointed out in a most obliging manner the desk 
at which he had been planted for forty years ; showed 
me ponderous tomes of figures, in his own remarkably 
neat hand, which, more properly than his few printed 
tracts, might be called his "Works." They seemed 
affectionate to his memory, and universally commended 
his expertness in book-keeping. It seems he was 
the inventor of some ledger which should combine the 
precision and certainty of the Italian double entry (I 
think they called it) with the brevity and facility of some 
newer German system ; but I am not able to appre- 
ciate the worth of the discovery. I have often heard 
him express a warm regard for his associates in office, 
and how fortunate he considered himself in having his 
lot thrown in amongst them. There is more sense, 
more discourse, more shrewdness, and even talent, 
among these clerks (he would say) , than in twice the 
number of authors by profession that I have conversed 
with. He would brighten up sometimes upon the " old 
days of the India House," when he consorted with 
Woodroife and Wissett, and Peter Corbet (a descend- 
ant and worthy representative, bating the point of 
sanctity, of old facetious Bishop Corbet) ; and Hoole, 
who translated Tasso ; and Bartlemy Brown, whose 
father (God assoil him therefore !) modernized Walton ; 
and sly, warm-hearted old Jack Cole (King Cole they 
called him in those days) and Campe and Fombelle, and 
a world of choice spirits, more than I can remember to 
name, who associated in those days with Jack Burrell 
(the bon vivant of the South-Sea House) ; and little 



A CHARACTER OF THE LATE ELIA. 187 

Eyton (said to be a facsimile of Pope, — he was a 
miniature of a gentleman) , that was cashier under him ; 
and Dan Voight of the custom-house, that left the 
famous library. 

Well, Elia is gone, — for aught I know, to be re- 
united with them, — and these poor traces of his pen 
are all we have to show for it. How little survives of 
the wordiest authors ! Of all they said or did in their 
lifetime, a few glittering words only ! His Essays found 
some favorers, as they appeared separately. They shuf- 
fled their way in the crowd well enough singly : how 
they will read, now they are brought together, is a 
question for the publishers, who have thus ventured to 
draw out into one piece his " weaved-up follies." 

Phil-Eli a. 



THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER. 
A FARCE. 



CHARACTERS. 



Flint, a Pawnbroker. 
Davenport, in love with Marian. 
Pendulous, a Reprieved Gentleman. 
Cutlet, a Sentimental Butcher. 
Golding, a Magistrate. 
William, Apprentice to Flint. 
Ben, Cutlet's Boy. 
Miss Flyn. 
Betty, her Maid. 
Marian, Daughter to Flint. 
Lucy, her Maid. 



THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER.* 
A FARCE. 



ACT I. 

Scene I. — An Apartment at Flint's House. 
Flint. "William. 

Flint. Carry those umbrellas, cottons, and wearing- 
apparel, up stairs. You may send that chest of tools 
to Robins's. 

William. That which you lent six pounds upon to 
the journeyman carpenter that had the sick wife ? 

Flint. The same. 

William. The man says, if you can give him till 
Thursday — 

Flint. Not a minute longer. His time was out yes- 
terday. These improvident fools ! 

* " For literary news, in my poor way," writes Lamb to Southey, in 
August, 1825, "I have a one-act farce, going to be acted at Haymarket; 
but wben? is the question. 'Tis an extravaganza, and like enough to 
follow 'Mr. H.' " 

Talfourd says that the farce thus referred to was founded upon Lamb's 
essay "On the Inconvenience of being Hanged;" and therefore it must 
be "The Pawnbroker's Daughter." But "The Pawnbroker's Daughter" 
is in two acts ; and according to the letter to Mrs. Shelley, published in this 
volume, it was not finished in July, 1827; and, consequently, could not have 
been ready for the stage in the summer of 1825. The piece, however, was 
never performed, but was published, 1830, in " Blackwood's Magazine." — 
Editor. 



192 THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER. 

William. The finical gentleman has been here about 
that seal that was his grandfather's. 

Flint. He cannot have it. Truly J our trade would 
be brought to a fine pass if we were bound to humor 
the fancies of our customers. This man would be taking: 
a liking to a snuff-box that he had inherited, and that 
gentlewoman might conceit a favorite chemise that had 
descended to her. 

William. The lady in the carriage has been here cry- 
ing about those jewels. She says, if you cannot let her 
have them at the advance she offers, her husband will 
come to know that she has pledged them. 

Flint. I have use for those jewels. Send Marian to 
me. [Exit William.] I know no other trade that is ex- 
pected to depart from its fair advantages but ours. 
I do not see the baker, the butcher, the shoemaker, 
or, to go higher, the lawyer, the physician, the divine, 
give up any of their legitimate gains, even when the 
pretences of their art had failed ; yet we are to be 
branded with an odious name, stigmatized, discoun- 
tenanced even by the administrators of those laws 
which acknowledge us, — scowled at by lower sort of 
people, whose needs we serve ! 

Enter Marian. 
Come hither, Marian. Come, kiss your father. The 
report runs that he is full of spotted crime. What is 
your belief, child ? 

Marian. That never good report went with our call- 
ing, father. I have heard you say, the poor look only 
to the advantages which we derive from them, and 
overlook the accommodations which they receive from 
vis. But the poor are the poor, father, and have little 



THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER. 193 

leisure to make distinctions. I wish we could give up 
this business. 

Flint. You have not seen that idle fellow, Daven- 
port ? 

Marian. No, indeed, father, since your injunction. 

Flint. I take but my lawful profit. The law is not 
over-favorable to us. 

Marian. Marian is no judge of these things. 

Flint. They call me oppressive, grinding — I know 
not what — 

Marian. Alas ! 

Flint. Usurer, extortioner. Am I these things? 

Marian. You are Marian's kind and careful father. 
That is enough for a child to know. 

Flint. Here, girl, is a little box of jewels, which the 
necessities of a foolish woman of quality have trans- 
ferred into our true and lawful possession. Go, place 
them with the trinkets that were your mother's. They 
are all yours, Marian, if you do not cross me in your 
marriage. Xo gentry shall match into this house to 
float their wife hereafter with her parentage. I will 
hold this business with convulsive grasp to my dying 
day. I will plague these poor, whom you speak so 
tenderly of. 

Marian. You frighten me, father. Do not frighten 
Marian. 

Flint. I have heard them say, " There goes Flint ! — 
Flint, the cruel pawnbroker!" 

Marian. Stay at home with Marian. You shall 
hear no ugly words to vex you. 

Flint. You shall ride in a gilded chariot upon the 
necks of these poor, Marian. Then tears shall drop 

13 



194 THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER. 

pearls for my girl. Their sighs shall be good wind for 
us. They shall blow good for my girl. Put up the 
jewels, Marian. [Exit. 

Enter Lucy. 

Lucy. Miss, miss, your father has taken his hat, and 
stepped out ; and Mr. Davenport is on the stairs : and 
I come to tell you — 

Marian. Alas ! who let him in? 

Enter Davenport. 

J) wo. My dearest girl — 

Marian. My father will kill me if he finds you have 
been here ! 

Dav. There is no time for explanations. I have 
positive information that your father means, in less 
than a week, to dispose of you to that ugly Saunders. 
The wretch has bragged of it to his acquaintance, and 
already calls you his. 

Marian. O Heavens ! 

Dav. Your resolution must be summary, as the time 
which calls for it. Mine or his you must be, without 
delay. There is no safety for you under this roof. 

Marian. My father — 

Dav. Is no father, if he would sacrifice you. 

Marian. But he is unhappy. Do not speak hard 
words of my father. 

Dav. Marian must exert her good sense. 

Lucy («5 if watchmg at the window). Oh, miss, 
your father has suddenly returned ! I see him with 
Mr. Saunders coming down the street ! Mr. Saunders, 
ma'am ! 

Marian. Begone, begone \ if you love me, Daven- 
port ! 



THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER. 195 

Bav. You must go with me, then, else here I am 
fixed. 

Lucy. Ay, miss, you must go, as Mr. Davenport 
says. Here is your cloak, miss, and your hat, and 
your gloves. Your father, ma'am! — 

Marian. Oh! where? where? Whither do you 
hurry me, Davenport? 

Dav. Quickly, quickly, Marian ! At the back-door. 

[Exit Marian, with Davenport, reluctantly; in her flight 
still holding the jewels. 

Lucy. Away! — away! What a lucky thought of 
mine to say her father was coming ! he would never 
have got her off else. Lord, Lord, I do love to help 
lovers ! 

[Exit, following them. 

Scene II. — A Butcher's Shop. 
Cutlet. Ben. 

Cutlet. Reach me down that book off the shelf where 
the shoulder of veal hangs. 

Ben. Is this it? 

Cutlet. No, — this is "Flowers of Sentiment :" the 
other, — ay, this is a good book. "An Argument 
against the Use of Animal Food. By J. R." That 
means Joseph Ritson. I will open it anywhere, and 
read, just as it happens. One cannot dip amiss in such 
books as these. The motto, I see, is from Pope; I 
dare say, very much to the purpose. (Reads:) — 

" The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day, 
Had he thy reason, would he skip and play ? 
Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food, 
And licks the hand " — 

Bless us ! is that saddle of mutton gone home to Mrs. 
Simpson's? It should have gone an hour ago. 



196 THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER. 

Ben. I was just going with it. 

Cutlet. Well, go. Where was I? Oh! — 

" And licks the hand just raised to shed its blood." 

What an affecting picture ! {Turns over the leaves, and 
reads :) — 

" It is probable that the long lives which are recorded of the people before 
the Flood were owing to their being confined to vegetable diet." 

Ben. The young gentleman in Pullen's Row, Isling- 
ton, that has got the consumption, has sent to know if 
you can let him have a sweetbread. 

Cutlet. Take two, — take all that are in the shop. 
What a disagreeable interruption ! {Reads again :) — 

" Those fierce and angry passions, which impel man to wage destructive 
war with man, may be traced to the ferment in the blood, produced by 
animal diet." 

Ben. The two pounds of rump-steaks must go home 
to Mr. Molyneux's. He is in training to fight Cribb. 

Cutlet. Well, take them : go along, and do not 
trouble me with your disgusting details. 

Cutlet {throwing down the book) . Why was I bred 
to this detestable business ? Was it not plain that this 
trembling sensibility, which has marked my character 
from earliest infancy, must disqualify me for a profes- 
sion which — what do ye want ? — what do ye buy ? 
Oh ! it is only somebody going past. I thought it had 
been a customer — Why was not I bred a glover, 
like my cousin Langston? To see him poke his two 
little sticks into a delicate pair of real Woodstock, — 
"A very little stretching, ma'am, and they will fit ex- 
actly." — Or a haberdasher, like my next-door neigh- 
bor, — " Not a better bit of lace in all town, my lady : 
Mrs. Breakstock took the last of it last Friday ; all but 



THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER. 197 

this bit, which I can afford to let your ladyship have at 
a bargain — reach down that drawer on your left hand, 
Miss Fisher." 

Enter, in haste, Davenport, Marian, and Lucy. 

Lucy. This is the house I saw a bill up at, ma'am ; 
and a droll creature the landlord is. 

Dan. We have no time for nicety. 

Cutlet. What do ye want ? what do ye buy ? Oh ! it 
is only Mrs. Lucy. 

Lucy whispers Cutlet. 

Cutlet. I have a set of apartments at the end of my 
garden. They are quite detatched from the shop. A 
single lady at present occupies the ground-floor. 

Marian. Ay, ay, anywhere. 

Dav. In, in — 

Cutlet. Pretty lamb ! — she seems agitated. 

Davenport and Marian go in with Cutlet. 

Lucy. I am mistaken if my young, lady does not 
find an agreeable companion in these apartments. Al- 
most a namesake. Only the difference of Flyn and 
Flint. I have some errands to do, or I would stop and 
have some fun with this droll butcher. 

Cutlet returns. 

Cutlet. WTry, how odd this is ! Your young lady 
knows my young lady. They are as thick as flies. 

Lucy. You may thank me for your new lodger, Mr. 
Cutlet. But, bless me, you do not look well ! 

Cutlet. To tell you the truth, I am rather heavy 
about the eyes. Want of sleep, I believe. 

Lucy. Late hours, perhaps. Raking last night ? 

Cutlet. No : that is not it, Mrs. Lucy. My repose 



198 THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER. 

was disturbed by a very different cause from what 
you may imagine. It proceeded from too much think- 
ing. 

Lucy. The deuse it did ! And what, if I may be so 
bold, might be the subject of your Night Thoughts? 

Cutlet. The distress of my fellow-creatures. I never 
lay my head down on my pillow, but I fall a-thinking, 
How many at this very instant are perishing ! — some 
with cold — 

Lucy. What ! in the midst of summer? 

Cutlet. Ay. Not here ; but in countries abroad, 
where the climate is different from ours. Our summers 
are their winters, and vice versd, you know. Some 
with cold — 

Lucy. What a canting rogue it is ! I should like to 
trump up some fine story to plague him. [Aside. 

Cutlet. Others with hunger ; some a prey to the 
rage of wild beasts — 

Lucy. He has got this by rote, out of some book. 

Cutlet. Some drowning, crossing crazy bridges in the 
dark ; some by the violence of the devouring flame — 

Lucy. I have it. For that matter, you need not 
send your humanity a-tra veiling, Mr. Cutlet. For in- 
stance, last night — 

Cutlet. Some by fevers, some by gunshot- wounds — 

Lucy. Only two streets off — 

Cutlet. Some in drunken quarrels — 

Lucy (aloud) . The butcher's shop at the corner. 

Cutlet. What were you saying about poor Cleaver? 

Lucy. He has found his ears at last. (Aside.) That 
he has had his house burnt down. 

Cutlet. Bless me ! 



THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER. 199 

Lucy. I saw four small children taken in at the 
green-grocer's. 

Cutlet. Do you know if he is insured? 

Lucy. Some say he is, but not to the full amount. 

Cutlet. Not to the full amount ? — how shocking ! He 
killed more meat than any of the trade between here 
and Carnaley Market; and the poor babes, — four of 
them, you say, — what a melting sight! He served 
some good customers about Marybone — I always 
think more of the children, in these cases, than of the 
fathers and mothers — Lady Lovebrown liked his veal 
better than any man's in the market — I wonder 
whether her ladyship is engaged — I must go and 
comfort poor Cleaver, however. [Exit. 

Lucy. Now is this pretender to humanity gone to 
avail himself of a neighbor's supposed ruin to inveigle 
his customers from him. Fine feelings ! — pshaw ! 

[Exit. 

Re-enter Cutlet. 

Cutlet. What a deceitful young hussy ! there is not 
a word of truth in her. There has been no fire. How 
can people play with one's feelings so? (Sings:) — 

" For tenderness formed " — 

No : I'll try the air I made upon myself. The words 
may compose me. (Sings:) — 

A weeping Londoner I am : 
A washer-woman was my dam ; 
She bred me up in a cock-loft, 
And fed my mind with sorrows soft. 

For when she wrung, with elbows stout, 
From linen wet the water out, 
The drops so like the tears did drip, 
They gave my infant nerves the hyp. 



200 THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER. 

Scarce three clean muckingers a week 
Would dry the brine that dewed my cheek: 
So, while I gave my sorrow scope, 
I almost ruined her in soap. 

My parish learning I did win 
In ward of Farrington-Within ; 
Where, after school, I did pursue 
My sports, as little boys will do. 

Cockchafers — none like me was found 
To set them spinning round and round. 
Oh, how my tender heart would melt 
To think what those poor varmin felt ! 

I never tied tin-kettle, clog, 
Or salt-box, at the tail of dog, 
Without a pang more keen at heart 
Than he felt at his outward part. 

And when the poor thing clattered off, 
To all the unfeeling mob a scoff, 
Thought I, " What that dumb creature feels, 
With half the parish at his heels ! " 

Arrived, you see, to man's estate, 
The butcher's calling is my fate; 
Yet still I keep my feeling ways, 
And leave the town on slaughtering-days. 

At Kentish Town, or Highgate Hill, 
I sit, retired, beside some rill ; 
And tears bedew my glistening eye, 
To think my playful lambs must die. 

But, when they're dead, I sell their meat 
On shambles kept both clean and neat : 
Sweetbreads also I guard full well, 
And keep them from the blue-bottle. 

Envy, with breath sharp as my steel, 
Has ne'er yet blown upon my veal ; 
And mouths of dames, and daintiests fops, 
Do water at my nice lamb-chops. 

[Exit, half laughing, half crying. 



THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER. 201 

Scene. — A Street. Davenport, solus. 

Dav. Thus far have I secured my charming prize. 
I can appreciate, while I lament, the delicacy which 
makes her refuse the protection of my sister's roof. 
But who comes here? 

Enter Pendulous, agitated. 

It must be. That fretful animal-motion, — that face 
working up and down with uneasy sensibility, like new 
yeast, — Jack — Jack Pendulous ! 

Pen. It is your old friend, and very miserable. 

Dav. Yapors, Jack. I have not known you fifteen 
years to have to guess at your complaint. Why, they 
troubled you at school. Do you remember when you 
had to speak the speech of Buckingham, when he is 
going to execution? 

Pen. Execution ! — he has certainly heard it. (Aside. ) 

Dav. What a pucker you were in over-night ! 

Pen. May be so, may be so, Mr. Davenport. That 
was an imaginary scene. I have had real troubles 
since. 

Dav. Pshaw ! so you call every common accident. 

Pen. Do you call my case so common, then? 

Dav. What case ? 

Pen. You have not heard, then? 

Dav. Positively, not a word. 

Pen. You must know I have been — (whispers) — - 
tried for a felony since then. 

Dav. Nonsense ! 

Pen. No subject for mirth, Mr. Davenport. A con- 
founded short-sighted fellow swore that I stopped him 
and robbed him on the York race-ground, at nine on a 
fine moonlight evening, when I was two hundred miles 



202 THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER. 

off in Dorsetshire. These hands have been held up at 
a common bar. 

Dav. Ridiculous ! — it could not have gone so far. 

Pen. A great deal farther, I assure you, Mr. Daven- 
port. I am ashamed to say how far it went. You 
must know, that, in the first shock and surprise of the 
accusation, shame — you know I was always susceptible 
— shame put me upon disguising my name, that, at 
all events, it might bring no disgrace upon my family. 
I called myself James Thompson. 

Dav. For Heaven's sake, compose yourself. 

Pen. I will. An old family ours, Mr. Davenport, — 
never had a blot upon it till now, — a family famous 
for the jealousy of its honor for many generations, — 
think of that, Mr. Davenport, — that felt a stain like 
a wound — 

Dav. Be calm, my dear friend. 

Pen. This served the purpose of a temporary con- 
cealment well enough ; but, when it came to the — alibi, 
I think they call it, — excuse these technical terms, 
they are hardly fit for the mouth of a gentleman, — the 
witnesses — that is another term — that I had sent for up 
from Melcombe Regis, and relied upon for clearing up 
my character, by disclosing my real name, John Pen- 
dulous, so discredited the cause which they came to 
serve, that it had quite a contrary effect to what was 
intended. In short, the usual forms passed, and you 
behold me here, the miserablest of mankind. 

Dav. (aside). He must be light-headed. 

Pen. Not at all, Mr. Davenport. I hear what you 
say ; though you speak it all on one side, as they do at 
the play-house. 






THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER. 203 

Dav. The sentence could never have been carried 
into — pshaw! — you are joking: the truth must have 
come out at last. 

Pen. So it did, Mr. Davenport, — just two minutes 
and a second too late, by the sheriff's stop-watch. Time 
enough to save my life, — my wretched life, — but an 
age too late for my honor. Pray, change the subject : 
the detail must be as offensive to you. 

Dav. With all my heart, to a more pleasing theme. 
The lively Maria Flyn — are you friends in that quarter 
still ? Have the old folks relented ? 

Pen. They are dead, and have left her mistress of 
her inclinations. But it requires great strength of mind 
to — 

Dav. To what? 

Pen. To stand up against the sneers of the world. 
It is not every young lady that feels herself confident 
against the shafts of ridicule, though aimed by the hand 
of prejudice. Not but in her heart, I believe, she pre- 
fers me to all mankind. But think, what would the 
world say, if, in defiance of the opinions of all man- 
kind, she should take to her arms a — reprieved man ! 

Dav. Whims ! You might turn the laugh of the 
world upon itself in a fortnight. These things are but 
nine-days' wonders. 

Pen. Do you think so, Mr. Davenport? 

Dav. Where does she live ? 

Pen. She has lodgings in the next street, in a sort of 
garden-house, that belongs to one Cutlet. I have not 
seen her since the affair. I was going there at her 
request. 

Dav. Ha, ha, ha ! 



204 THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER. 

Pen. Why do you laugh? 

Dav. The oddest fellow! I will tell you — But 
here he comes. 

Enter Cutlet. 

Cutlet (to Davenport) . Sir, the young lady at my 
house is desirous you should return immediately. She 
has heard something from home. 

Pen. What do I hear? 

Dav. 'Tis her fears, I dare say. My dear Pendulous, 
you will exeuse me — I must not tell him our situa- 
tion at present, though it cost him a fit of jealousy. We 
shall have fifty opportunities for explanation. [Exit. 

Pen. Does that gentleman visit the lady at your 
lodgings ? 

Cutlet. He is quite familiar there, I assure you. He 
is all in all with her, as they say. 

Pen. It is but too plain. Fool that I have been, 
not to suspect, that, while she pretended scruples, some 
rival was at the root of her infidelity ! 

Cutlet. You seem distressed, sir. Bless me ! 

Pen. I am, friend, above the reach of comfort. 

Cutlet. Consolation, then, can be to no purpose? 

Pen. None. 

Cutlet. I am so happy to have met with him ! 

Pen. Wretch, wretch, wretch ! 

Cutlet. There he goes ! How he walks about, biting 
his nails ! I would not exchange this luxury of un- 
availing pity for worlds. 

Pen. Stigmatized by the world — 

Cutlet. My case exactly. Let us compare notes. 

Pen. For an accident which — 

Cutlet. For a profession which — 



THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER. 205 

Pen. In the eye of reason, has nothing in it — 

Cutlet. Absolutely nothing in it — 

Pen. Brought up at a public bar — 

Cutlet. Brought up to an odious trade — 

Pen. With nerves like mine — 

Cutlet. With nerves like mine — 

Pen. Arraigned, condemned — 

Cutlet. By a foolish world — 

Pen. By a judge and jury — 

Cutlet. By an invidious exclusion, disqualified for 
sitting upon a jury at all — 

Pen. Tried, cast, and — 

Cutlet. What? 

Pen. Hanged, sir ; hanged by the neck, till I was — 

Cutlet. Bless me ! 

Pen. Why should not I publish it to the whole 
world, since she, whose prejudice alone I wished to over- 
come, deserts me? 

Cutlet. Lord have mercy upon us ! Not so bad as 
that comes to, I hope? 

Pen. When she joins in the judgment of an illiberal 
world against me — 

Cutlet. You said hanged, sir; that is, I mean — ■ 
perhaps I mistook you. How ghostly he looks ! 

Pen. Fear me not, my friend: I am no ghost, 
though I heartily wish I were one. 

Cutlet. Why, then, ten to one you were — 

Pen. Cut down. The odious words shall out, though 
it choke me. 

Cutlet. Your case must have some things in it very 
curious. I dare say, you kept a journal of your sensa- 
tions ! 



206 THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER. 

Pen. Sensations ! 

Cutlet. Ay : while you were being — you know what 
I mean. They say, persons in your situation have 
lights dancing before their eyes, — bluish. But, then, 
the worst of all is coming to one's self again. 

Pen. Plagues, furies, tormentors ! I shall go mad ! 

[Exit. 

Cutlet. There, he says he shall go mad ! Well, my 
head has not been very right of late : it goes with a 
whirl and a buzz, somehow. I believe I must not think 
so deeply. Common people, that don't reason, know 
nothing of these aberrations. 

" Great wits go mad, and small ones only dull ; 
Distracting cares vex not the empty skull: 
They seize on heads that think, and hearts that feel, 
As flies attack the — better sort of veal." 



act n. 

Scene at Flint's. Flint. William. 

Flint. I have over-walked myself, and am quite ex- 
hausted. Tell Marian to come and play to me. 

William. I shall, sir. 

Flint. I have been troubled with an evil spirit of 
late ; I think, an evil spirit. It goes and comes, as 
my daughter is with or from me. It cannot stand 
before her gentle look, when, to please her father, she 
takes down her music-book. 

Enter William. 

William. Miss Marian went out soon after you, and 
is not returned. 



THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER. 207 

Flint. That is a pity, — that is a pity ! Where can 
the foolish girl be gadding ? 

William. The shopmen say she went out with Mr. 
Davenport. 

Flint. Davenport? Impossible! 

William. They say, they are sure it was he, by the 
same token that they saw her slip into his hand, when 
she was past the door, the casket which you gave her. 

Flint. Gave her, William? I only intrusted it to 
her. She has robbed me ! Marian is a thief ! You 
must go to the justice, William, and get out a warrant 
against her immediately. Do you help them in the 
description. Put in "Marian Flint," in plain words, 
— no remonstrances, William, — "daughter of Reuben 
Flint," — no remonstrances ; but do it — 

William. Nay, sir — 

Flint. I am rock, absolute rock, to all that you can 
say, — a piece of solid rock. What is it that makes 
my legs to fail, and my whole frame to totter, thus ? 
It has been my over- walking. I am very faint : support 
me in, William. [Exeunt 

Sce>te. — The Apartment of Miss Flyn. 
Miss Flyn. Betty. 

Miss F. 'Tis past eleven. Every minute, I expect 
Mr. Pendulous here. What a meeting do I anticipate ! 

Betty. Anticipate, truly ! what other than a joyful 
meeting can it be between two agreed lovers, who have 
been parted for these four months ? 

Miss F. But, in that cruel space, what accidents have 
happened! — (aside) — As yet, I perceive she is igno- 
rant of this unfortunate affair. 



208 THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER. 

Betty. Lord, madam ! what accidents ? He has not 
had a fall or a tumble, has he ? He is not coming upon 
crutches ? 

Miss F. Not exactly a fall — (aside) — I wish I had 
courage to admit her to my confidence. 

Betty. If his neck is whole, his heart is so too, I 
warrant it. 

Miss F. His neck ! — (aside) — She certainly mis- 
trusts something. He writes me word that this must 
be his last interview. 

Betty. Then I guess the whole business. The wretch 
is unfaithful. Some creature or other has got him into 
a noose. 

Miss F. A noose ! 

Betty. And I shall never more see him hang — 

Miss F. Hang ! did you say, Betty ? 

Betty. About that dear, fond neck, I was going to 
add, madam ; but you interrupted me. 

Miss F. I can no longer labor with a secret which 
oppresses me thus. Can you be trusty? 

Betty. Who ? I, madam ? — (aside) — Lord ! I am 
so glad ! Now I shall know all ! 

Miss F. This letter discloses the reasons of his un- 
accountable long absence from me. Peruse it, and say 
if we have not reason to be unhappy. 

[Betty retires to the window to read the letter. 
Mr. Pendulous enters. 

Miss F. My dear Pendulous ! 

Pen. Maria! — Nay, shun the embrace of a dis- 
graced man, who comes but to tell you that you must 
renounce his society for ever. 

Miss F. Nay, Pendulous, avoid me not. 



THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER. 209 

Pen. (aside). That was tender. I may be mistaken. 
Whilst I stood on honorable terms, Maria might have 
met my caresses without a blush. 

[Betty, ivho has not attended to the entrance of Pendulous, 
through her eagerness to read the letter, comes forward. 

Betty. Ha, ha, ha ! What a funny story, madam ! 
And is this all you make such a fuss about? I would 
not care if twenty of my lovers had been — (seeing Pen- 
dulous) — Lord ! sir, I ask pardon. 

Pen. Are we not alone, then? 

Miss F. 'Tis only Betty, my old servant. You re- 
member Betty? 

Pen. What letter is that? 

Miss F. Oh ! something from her sweetheart, I sup- 
pose. 

Betty. Yes, ma'am ; that is all. I shall die of laugh- 
ing. 

Pen. You have not surely been showing her — 

Miss F. I must be ingenuous. You must know, 
then, that I was just giving Betty a hint, as you came in. 

Pen. A hint ! 

Miss F. Yes, of our unfortunate embarrassment. 

Pen. My letter ! 

Miss F. I thought it as well that she should know it 
at first. 

Pen. 'Tis mighty well, madam ! — 'tis as it should be. 
I was ordained to be a wretched laughing-stock to all 
the world ; and it is fit that our drabs and our servant 
wenches should have their share of the amusement. 

Betty. Marry, come up ! Drabs and servant wenches ! 
and this from a person in his circumstances ! 

[Betty flings herself out of the room, muttering. 
14 



210 THE PAWNBROKERS DAUGHTER. 

Miss F. I understand not this lano-uao-e. I was 
prepared to give my Pendulous a tender meeting ; to 
assure him, that, however in the eyes of the superficial 
and the censorious he may have incurred a partial degra- 
dation, in the esteem of one, at least, he stood as high 
as ever ; that it was not in the power of a ridiculous 
accident — involving no guilt, no shadow of imputation 
— to separate two hearts cemented by holiest vows, as 
ours have been. This untimely repulse to my affections 
may awaken scruples in me, which hitherto, in tender- 
ness to you, I have suppressed. 

Pen. I very well understand what you call tender- 
ness, madam; but, in some situations, pity — pity — is 
the greatest insult. 

Miss F. I can endure no longer. "When you are in 
a calmer mood, you will be sorry that you have wrung 
my heart so. [Exit. 

Pen. Maria ! She is gone — in tears ; yet, it seems, 
she has had her scruples. She said she had tried to 
smother them. Her maid Betty intimated as much. 

Re-enter Betty. 

Pen. Never mind Betty, sir : depend upon it, she 
will never peach. 

Pen. Peach ! 

Betty. Lord, sir, these scruples will blow over. Go 
to her again when she is in a better humor. You know, 
we must stand off a little at first, to save appearances. 

Pen. Appearances ! we! 

Betty. It will be decent to let some time elapse. 

Pen. Time elapse ! — 

" Lost, wretched Pendulous ! to scorn betrayed, — 
The scoff alike of mistress and of maid ! 



THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER. 211 

"What now remains for thee, forsaken man, 

But to complete thy fate's abortive plan, 

And finish what the feeble law began? " [Exeunt. 

Re-enter Miss Flyn, with Marian. 

Miss F. Now both our lovers are gone, I hope my 
friend will have less reserve. You must consider this 
apartment as yours while you stay here. 'Tis larger 
and more commodious than your own. 

Marian. You are kind, Maria. My sad story I have 
troubled you with. I have some jewels here, which I 
unintentionally brought away. I have only to beg you 
will take the trouble to restore them to my father : and, 
without disclosing my present situation, to tell him that 
my next step — with or without the concurrence of Mr. 
Davenport — shall be to throw myself at his feet to be 
forgiven. I dare not see him till you have explored 
the way for me. I am convinced, I was tricked into 
this elopement. 

Miss F. Your commands shall be obeyed implicitly. 

Marian. You are good, (Agitated.) 

Miss F. Moderate your apprehensions, my sweet 
friend. I, too, have known my sorrows — (smiling') — 
You have heard of the ridiculous affair ? 

Marian. Between Mr. Pendulous and you ? Daven- 
port informed me of it ; and we both took the liberty 
of blaming the over-niceness of your scruples. 

Miss F. You mistake me. The refinement is entirely 
on the part of my lover. He thinks me not nice enough. 
I am obliged to feign a little reluctance, that he may 
not take quite a distaste to me. Will you believe it, 
that he turns my very constancy into a reproach ; and 
declares, that a woman must be devoid of all delicacy, 



212 THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER. 

that, after a thing of that sort, could endurd the sight 
of her husband in — 

Marian. In what? 

Miss F. The sight of a man at all in — 

Marian. I comprehend you not. 

Miss F. In — in a — (whispers) — night -cap, my 
dear ; and now the mischief is out. 

Marian. Is there no way to cure him? 

Miss F. None ; unless I were to try the experiment, 
by placing myself in the hands of justice for a little 
while, how far an equality in misfortune might breed a 
sympathy in sentiment. Our reputations would be both 
upon a level then, you know. What think you of a 
little innocent shop-lifting, in sport? 

Marian. And, by that contrivance, to be taken before 
a magistrate ? The project sounds oddly. 

Miss F. And yet I am more than half-persuaded it 
is feasible. 

Enter Betty. 

Betty. Mr. Davenport is below, ma'am, and desires 
to speak with you. 

Marian. You will excuse me. (Going — turning 
hack.) You will remember the casket? [Exit. 

Miss F. Depend on me. 

Betty. And a strange man desires to see you, ma'am. 
I do not half like his looks. 

Miss F. Show him in. 

[Exit Betty, and returns with a police-officer. Betty goes out. 

Officer. Your servant, ma'am. Your name is — - 
Miss F. Flyn, sir. Your business with me? 
Officer (alternately surveying the lady and his paper of 
instructions). Marian Flint? 



THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER. 213 

Miss F. Maria Flyn. 

Officer. Ay, ay : Flyn or Flint. 'Tis all one. Some 
write plain Mary, and some put Ann after it. I come 
about a casket. 

Miss F. I guess the whole business. He takes me 
for my friend. Something may come out of this. I 
will humor him. 

Officer (aside). Answers to the description to a 
tittle. "Soft, gray eyes; pale complexion" — 

Miss F. Yet I have been told by flatterers that my 
eyes were blue — (takes out a pocket- glass) . I hope I 
look pretty tolerably to-day. 

Officer. " Blue ! " — they are a sort of bluish-gray, 
now I look better ; and as for color, that comes and 
goes. Blushing is often a sign of a hardened offender. 
Do you know any thing of a casket ? 

Miss F. Here is one which a friend has just delivered 
to my keeping. 

Officer. And which I must beg leave to secure, to- 
gether with your ladyship's person. " Garnets, pearls, 
diamond-bracelet," — here they are, sure enough. 

Miss F. Indeed I am innocent. 

Officer. Every man is presumed so till he is found 
otherwise. 

Miss F. Police wit ! Have you a warrant ? 

Officer. Tolerably cool, that. Here it is, signed by 
Justice Golding, at the requisition of Reuben Flint, who 
deposes that you have robbed him. 

Miss F. How lucky this turns out ! — (aside) — Can 
I be indulged with a coach. 

Officer. To Marlborough Street ? certainly — an old 
offender — (aside) — The thing shall be conducted with 
as much delicacy as is consistent with security. 



214 THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER. 

Miss F. Police manners ! I will trust myself to 
your protection, then. [Exeunt 

Scene. — Police-office. 
Justice, Flint, Officers, &c. 

Justice. Before we proceed to extremities, Mr. Flint, 
let me entreat you to consider the consequences. What 
will the world say to your exposing your own child? 

Flint. The world is not my friend. I belong to a 
profession, which has long brought me acquainted with 
its injustice. I return scorn for scorn, and desire its 
censure above its plaudits. 

Justice. But, in this case, delicacy must make you 
pause. 

Flint. Delicacy ! ha, ha ! — pawnbroker ! — fitly these 
words suit. Delicate pawnbroker ! — delicate devil ! — 
let the law take its course. 

Justice. Consider, the jewels are found. 

Flint. 'Tis not the silly bawbles I regard. Are you 
a man ? are you a father ? and think you I could stoop 
so low, vile as I stand here, as to make money — .filthy 
money — of the stuff which a daughter's touch has 
desecrated? Deep in some pit first I would bury them. 

Justice. Yet pause a little. Consider. An only child. 

Flint. Only, only ! — there, it is that stings me, — 
makes me mad. She was the only thing I had to love 
me, — to bear me up against the nipping injuries of the 
world. I prate when I should act. Bring in your 
prisoner. 

[The Justice makes a sign to the Officer, who goes out, 
and returns with Miss Flyn. 

Flint. What a mockery of my sight is here ! This 
is no daughter. 



THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER. 215 

Officer. Daughter or no daughter, she has confessed 
to this casket. 

Flint {handling it). The very same. Was it in 
the power of these pale splendors to dazzle the sight 
of honesty, — to put out the regardful eye of piety and 
daughter -love? Why, a poor glow-worm shows more 
brightly. Bear witness how I valued them ! — (tramples 
on them.) — Fair lady, know you aught of my child? 

Miss F. I shall here answer no questions. 

Justice. You must explain how you came by these 
jewels, madam. 

Miss F. (aside). Now, confidence, assist me! A 
gentleman in the neighborhood will answer for me. 

Justice. His name? 

Miss F. Pendulous. 

Justice. That lives in the next street? 

Miss F. The same. Now I have him, sure. 

Justice. Let him be sent for : I believe the gentleman 
to be respectable, and will accept his security. 

Flint. Why do I waste my time where I have no 
business? None, — I have none any more in the world, 

— none. 

Enter Pendulous. 

Fen. What is the meaning of this extraordinary 
summons ? — Maria here ! 

Flint. Know you any thing of my daughter, sir? 

Pen. Sir, I neither know her nor yourself, nor why 
I am brought hither ; but for this lady, if you have 
any thing against her, I will answer with my life and 
fortune. 

Justice. Make out the bail-bond. 

Officer (surveying Pendulous). Please your worship, 



216 THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER. 

before you take that gentleman's bond, may I have 
leave to put in a word? 

Fen. (agitated). I guess what is coming. 

Officer. I have seen that gentleman hold up his hand 
at a crimnal bar. 

Justice. Ha ! 

Miss F. (aside) . Better and better. 

Officer. My eyes cannot deceive me. His lips 
quivered about, while he was being tried, just as they 
do now. His name is not Pendulous. 

Miss F. Excellent ! 

Officer. He pleaded to the name of Thompson at 
York Assizes. 

Justice. Can this be true ? 

Miss F. I could kiss the fellow ! 

Officer. He was had up for a foot-pad. 

Miss F. A dainty fellow ! 

Pen. My iniquitous fate pursues me everywhere. 

Justice. You confess, then? 

Pen. I am steeped in infamy. 

Miss F. I am as deep in the mire as yourself. 

Pen. My reproach can never be washed out. 

Miss F. Nor mine. 

Pen. I am doomed to everlasting shame. 

Miss F. We are both in a predicament. 

Justice. I am in a maze where all this will end. 

Enter Makian and Davenport. 

Marian (kneeling) . My dear father ! 
Flint. Do I dream? 
Marian. I am your Marian. 
Justice. Wonders thicken. 



THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER. 217 

Flint. The casket — 

Miss F. Let me clear up the rest. 

Flint. The casket — 

Miss F. Was inadvertently in your daughter's hand, 
when, by an artifice of her maid Lucy, set on, as she 
confesses, by this gentleman here — 

Dav. I plead guilty. 

Miss F. She was persuaded that you were, in a hur- 
ry, going to marry her to an object of her dislike ; nay, 
that he was actually in the house for the purpose. The 
speed of her flight admitted not of her depositing the 
jewels ; but to me, who have been her inseparable com- 
panion since she quitted your roof, she intrusted the 
return of them, w T hich the precipitate measures of this 
gentleman (pointing to the officer) alone prevented. Mr. 
Cutlet, whom I see coming, can witness this to be true. 

Enter Cutlet, in haste. 

Cutlet. Ay, poor lamb ! poor lamb ! I can witness. 
I have run in such a haste, hearing how affairs stood, 
that I have left my shambles without a protector. If 
your worship had seen how she cried (pointing to 
Marian) and trembled, and insisted upon being brought 
to her father ! Mr. Davenport here could not stay her. 

Flint. I can forbear no longer. Marian, will you 
play once again, to please your old father? 

Marian. I have a good mind to make you buy me a 
new grand piano for your naughty suspicions of me. 

Dav. What is to become of me? 

Flint. I will do more than that : the poor lady shall 
have her jewels again. 

Marian. Shall she? 



218 THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER. 

Flint. Upon reasonable terms (smiling) . And now, 
I suppose, the court may adjourn. 

Dav. Marian ! 

Flint. I guess what is passing in your mind, Mr. 
Davenport : but you have behaved, upon the whole, so 
like a man of honor, that it will give me pleasure, if 
you will visit at my house for the future ; but — 
(smiling) — not clandestinely, Marian. 

Marian. Hush, father ! 

Flint. I own I had prejudices against gentry ; but I 
have met with so much candor and kindness among my 
betters this day, — from this gentleman in particular 
(turning to the Justice), — that I begin to think of 
leaving off business, and setting up for a gentleman 
myself. 

Justice. You have the feelings of one. 

Flint. Marian will not object to it. 

Justice. But — (turning to Miss Flyn) — what motive 
could induce this lady to take so much disgrace upon 
herself, when a word's explanation might have relieved 
her? 

Miss F. This gentleman — (turning to Pendulous) 
— can explain. 

Fen. The devil! 

Miss F. This gentleman, I repeat it, whose back- 
wardness in concluding a long and honorable suit, from 
a mistaken delicacy — 

Pen. How ? 

Miss F. Drove me upon the expedient of involving 
myself in the same disagreeable embarrassments with 
himself, in the hope that a more perfect sympathy 
might subsist between us for the future. 



THE PAWNBROKER'S DAUGHTER. 219 

Pen. I see it, — I see it all ! 

Justice (to Pendulous). You were then tried at 
York? 

Pen. I was — Cast - — 

Justice. Condemned. 

Pen. Executed. 

Justice. How ! 

Pen. Cut down, and came to life again ! False 
delicacy, adieu ! The true sort — which this lady has 
manifested, by an expedient, which, at first sight, might 
seem a little unpromising — has cured me of the other. 
We are now on even terms. 

Miss F. And may — 

Pen. Marry, — I know it was your word. 

Miss F. And make a very quiet — 

Pen. Exemplary — 

Miss F. Agreeing pair of — 

Pen. Acquitted felons. 

Flint. And let the prejudiced against our profession 
acknowledge that a money-lender may have the heart 
of a father ; and that, in the casket whose loss grieved 
him so sorely, he valued nothing so dear as — (turning 
to Marian) — one poor domestic jewel. 






THE ADYENTUBES OF ULYSSES. 



" You like the ' Odyssey.' Did you ever read my ' Adventures of 
Ulysses,' — founded on Chapman's old translation, — for children or men? 
Chapman is divine; and my abridgment has not quite emptied him of 
his divinity." — Lamb, in a letter to Bernard Barton. 



PREFACE 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 



This work is designed as a supplement to the "Adventures 
of Telemachus." It treats of the conduct and sufferings of 
Ulysses, the father of Telemachus. The picture which it 
exhibits is that of a brave man struggling with adversity; 
by a wise use of events, and with an inimitable presence of 
mind under difficulties, forcing out a way for himself through 
the severest trials to which human life can be exposed ; with 
enemies, natural and preternatural, surrounding him on all 
sides. The agents in this tale, besides men and women, are 
giants, enchanters, sirens, — things which denote external force 
or internal temptations ; the twofold danger which a wise forti- 
tude must expect to encounter in its course through this world. 
The fictions contained in it will be found to comprehend some 
of the most admired inventions of Grecian mythology. 

The groundwork of the story is as old as the " Odyssey ; " 
but the moral and the coloring are comparatively modern. 
By avoiding the prolixity which marks the speeches and the 
descriptions in Homer, I have gained a rapidity to the narra- 
tion, which I hope will make it more attractive, and give it 
more the air of a romance, to young readers ; though I am 
sensible, that, by the curtailment, I have sacrificed in many 
places the manners to the passion, the subordinate character- 

[223] 



224 PREFACE. 

istics to the essential interest of the story. The attempt is 
not to be considered as seeking a comparison with any of the 
direct translations of the " Odyssey," either in prose or verse ; 
though, if I were to state the obligations which I have had to 
one obsolete version,* I should run the hazard of depriving 
myself of the very slender degree of reputation which I 
could hope to acquire from a trifle like the present under- 
taking. 

* The translation of Homer, by Chapman, in the reign of James I. 



THE 






ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE CICONS. — THE FRUIT OF THE LOTOS-TREE. — POLYPHEMUS AND THE 
CYCLOPS. — THE KINGDOM OF THE WINDS, AND GOD ^EOLUS' FATAL 
PRESENT.— THE L^ESTRYGONIAN MAN-EATERS 

This history tells of the wanderings of Ulysses and his 
followers in their return from Troy, after the destruction 
of that famous city of Asia by the Grecians. He was 
inflamed with a desire of seeing again, after a ten-years' 
absence, his wife and native country Ithaca. He was 
king of a barren spot, and a poor country in comparison 
of the fruitful plains of Asia, which he was leaving, or 
the wealthy kingdoms which he touched upon in his 
return ; yet, wherever he came, he could never see a 
soil which appeared in his eyes half so sweet or desirable 
as his country earth. This made him refuse the offers 
of the goddess Calypso to stay with her, and partake of 
her immortality in the delightful island ; and this gave 
him strength to break from the enchantments of Circe, 
the daughter of the Sun. 

From Troy, ill winds cast Ulysses and his fleet upon 
the coast of the Cicons, a people hostile to the Grecians. 
Landing his forces, he laid siege to their chief city, 

15 [225] 



226 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

Ismarus, which he took, and with it much spoil, and 
slew many people. But success proved fatal to him; 
for his soldiers, elated with the spoil, and the good store 
of provisions which they found in that place, fell to eat- 
ing and drinking, forgetful of their safety, till the Cicons, 
who inhabited the coast, had time to assemble their 
friends and allies from the interior; who, mustering in 
prodigious force, set upon the Grecians while they 
negligently revelled and feasted, and slew many of them, 
and recovered the spoil. They, dispirited and thinned 
in their numbers, with difficulty made their retreat good 
to the ships. 

Thence they set sail, sad at heart, yet something 
cheered, that, with such fearful odds against them, they 
had not all been utterly destroyed. A dreadful tempest 
ensued, which for two nights and two days tossed them 
about ; but, the third day, the weather cleared, and they 
had hopes of a favorable gale to carry them to Ithaca ; 
but, as they doubled the Cape of Malea, suddenly a, 
north wind arising drove them back as far as Cythera. 
After that, for the space of nine days, contrary winds 
continued to drive them in an opposite direction to the 
point to which they were bound ; and the tenth day they 
put in at a shore where a race of men dwell that are 
sustained by the fruit of the lotos-tree. Here Ulysses 
sent some of his men to land for fresh water, who were 
met by certain of the inhabitants, that gave them some 
of their country food to eat, not with any ill intention 
towards them, though in the event it proved pernicious ; 
for, having eaten of this fruit, so pleasant it proved to 
their appetite, that they in a minute quite forgot all 
thoughts of home or of their countrymen, or of ever 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 227 

returning back to the ships to give an account of what 
sort of inhabitants dwelt there, but they would needs 
stay and live there among them, and eat of that precious 
food for ever ; and when Ulysses sent other of his men 
to look for them, and to bring them back by force, they 
strove and wept, and would not leave their food for 
heaven itself, so much the pleasure of that enchanting 
fruit had bewitched them. But Ulysses caused them to 
be bound hand and foot, and cast under the hatches ; 
and set sail with all possible speed from that baneful 
coast, lest others after them might taste the lotos, which 
had such strange qualities to make men forget their 
native country and the thoughts of home. 

Coasting on all that night by unknown and out-of- 
the-way shores, they came by daybreak to the land 
where the Cyclops dwell ; a sort of giant shepherds, that 
neither sow nor plough, but the earth untilled produces 
for them rich wheat and barley and grapes : yet they 
have neither bread nor wine, nor knoiv the arts of culti- 
vation, nor care to know them ; for they live each man 
to himself, without laws or government, or any thing 
like a state or kingdom; but their dwellings are in 
caves, on the steep heads of mountains, every man's 
household governed by his own caprice, or not governed 
at all, their wives and children as lawless as themselves ; 
none caring for others, but each doing as he or she 
thinks good. Ships or boats they have none, nor arti- 
ficers to make them ; no trade or commerce, or wish to 
visit other shores : yet they have convenient places for 
harbors and for shipping. Here Ulysses, with a chosen 
party of twelve followers, landed, to explore what sort 
of men dwelt there, — whether hospitable and friendly to 



228 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

strangers, or altogether wild and savage ; for, as yet, 
no dwellers appeared in sight. 

The first sign of habitation which they came to was a 
giant's cave, rudely fashioned, but of a size which be- 
tokened the vast proportions of its owner ; the pillars 
which supported it being the bodies of huge oaks or 
pines, in the natural state of the tree ; and all about 
showed more marks of strength than skill in whoever 
built it. Ulysses, entering it, admired the savage con- 
trivances and artless structure of the place, and longed 
to see the tenant of so outlandish a mansion ; but well 
conjecturing that gifts would have more avail in extract- 
ing courtesy, than strength would succeed in forcing it, 
from such a one as he expected to find the inhabitant, 
he resolved to flatter his hospitality with a present of 
Greek wine, of which he had store in twelve great ves- 
sels, — so strong, that no one ever drank it without an 
infusion of twenty parts of water to one of wine, yet 
the fragrance of it even then so delicious, that it would 
have vexed a man who smelled it to abstain from tast- 
ing it ; but whoever tasted it, it was able to raise his 
courage to the height of heroic deeds. Taking with 
them a goat-skin flagon full of this precious liquor, 
they ventured into the recesses of the cave. Here they 
pleased themselves a whole day with beholding the 
giant's kitchen, where the flesh of sheep and goats lay 
strewed ; his dairy, where goat-milk stood ranged in 
troughs and pails ; his pens, where he kept his live ani- 
mals ; but those he had driven forth to pasture with 
him when he went out in the morning. While they 
were feasting their eyes with a sight of these curiosities, 
their ears were suddenly deafened with a noise like the 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 229 

falling of a house. It was the owner of the cave, who 
had been abroad all day, feeding his flock, as his custom 
was, in the mountains, and now drove them home in 
the evening from pasture. He threw down a pile of 
firewood, which he had been gathering against supper- 
time, before the mouth of the cave, which occasioned 
the crash they heard. The Grecians hid themselves in 
the remote parts of the cave at sight of the uncouth 
monster. It was Polyphemus, the largest and savagest 
of the Cyclops, who boasted himself to be the son of 
Neptune. He looked more like a 'mountain crag than 
a man ; and to his brutal body he had a brutish mind 
answerable. He drove his flock, all that gave milk, 
to the interior of the cave, but left the rams and the he- 
goats without. Then, taking up a stone so massy that 
twenty oxen could not have drawn it, he placed it at the 
mouth of the cave to defend the entrance, and sat him 
down to milk his ewes and his goats ; which done, he 
lastly kindled a fire, and, throwing his great eye round 
the cave (for the Cyclops have no more than one eye, 
and that placed in the midst of their forehead) , by the 
glimmering light he discerned some of Ulysses' men. 

"Ho, guests! what are you? — merchants or wan- 
dering thieves ? " he bellowed out in a voice which took 
from them all power of reply, it was so astounding. 

Only Ulysses summoned resolution to answer, that 
they came neither for plunder nor traffic, but were Gre- 
cians, who had lost their way, returning from Troy; 
which famous city, under the conduct of Agamemnon, 
the renowned son of Atreus, they had sacked, and laid 
level with the ground. Yet now they prostrated them- 
selves humbly before his feet, whom they acknowledged 



230 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

to be mightier than they, and besought him that he 
would bestow the rites of hospitality upon them ; for 
that Jove was the avenger of wrongs done to strangers, 
and would fiercely resent any injury which they might 
suffer. 

" Fool ! " said the Cyclop, "to come so far to preach 
to me the fear of the gods. We Cyclops care not for 
your Jove, whom you fable to be nursed by a goat, nor 
any of your blessed ones. We are stronger than they, 
and dare bid open battle to Jove himself, though you 
and all your fellows of the earth join with him ! " And 
he bade them tell him where their ship was in which 
they came, and whether they had any companions. 
But Ulysses, with a wise caution, made answer, that 
they had no ship or companions, but were unfortunate 
men, whom the sea, splitting their ship in pieces, had 
dashed upon his coast, and they alone had escaped. 
He replied nothing, but, griping two of the nearest of 
them as if they had been no more than children, he 
dashed their brains out against the earth, and, shocking 
to relate, tore in pieces their limbs, and devoured them, 
yet warm and trembling, making a lion's meal of them, 
lapping the blood : for the Cyclops are man-eaters, and 
esteem human flesh to be a delicacy far above goat's or 
kid's ; though, by reason of their abhorred customs, few 
men approach their coast, except some stragglers, or 
now and then a shipwrecked mariner. At a sight so 
horrid, Ulysses and his men were like distracted people. 
He, when he had made an end of his wicked supper, 
drained a draught of goat's milk down his prodigious 
throat, and lay down and slept among his goats. Then 
Ulysses drew his sword, and half resolved to thrust it 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 231 

with all his might in at the bosom of the sleeping mon- 
ster : but wiser thoughts restrained him, else they had 
there without help all perished ; for none but Polyphe- 
mus himself could have removed that mass of stone 
which he had placed to guard the entrance. So they 
were constrained to abide all that night in fear. 

When day came, the Cyclop awoke, and, kindling a 
fire, made his breakfast of two other of his unfortunate 
prisoners ; then milked his goats, as he was accustomed ; 
and pushing aside the vast stone, and shutting it again, 
when he had done, upon the prisoners, with as much 
ease as a man opens and shuts a quiver's lid, he let out 
his flock, and drove them before him with whistlings 
(as sharp as winds in storms) to the mountains. 

Then Ulysses, of whose strength or cunning the Cy- 
clop seems to have had as little heed as of an infant's, 
being left alone with the remnant of his men which 
the Cyclop had not devoured, gave manifest proof how 
far manly wisdom excels brutish force. He chose a 
stake from among the wood which the Cyclop had piled 
up for firing, in length and thickness like a mast, which 
he sharpened, and hardened in the fire ; and selected four 
men, and instructed them what they should do with this 
stake, and made them perfect in their parts. 

When the evening was come, the Cyclop drove home 
his sheep ; and as fortune directed it, either of purpose, 
or that his memory was overruled by the gods to his 
hurt (as in the issue it proved), he drove the males of 
his flock, contrary to his custom, along with the dams 
into the pens. Then shutting to the stone of the cave, 
he fell to his horrible supper. When he had despatched 
two more of the Grecians, Ulysses waxed bold with the 



232 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

contemplation of his project, and took a bowl of Greek 
wine, and merrily dared the Cyclop to drink. 

"Cyclop," he said, "take a bowl of wine from the 
hand of your guest : it may serve to digest the man's 
flesh that you have eaten, and show what drink our 
ship held before it went down. All I ask in recom- 
pense, if you find it good, is to be dismissed in a whole 
skin. Truly you must look to have few visitors, if you 
observe this new custom of eating your guests." 

The brute took and drank, and vehemently enjoyed 
the taste of wine, which was new to him, and swilled 
again at the flagon, and entreated for more ; and prayed 
Ulysses to tell him his name, that he might bestow a 
gift upon the man who had given him such brave liquor. 
The Cyclops, he said, had grapes; but this rich juice, 
he swore, was simply divine. Again Ulysses plied 
him with the wine, and the fool drank it as fast as he 
poured out ; and again he asked the name of his bene- 
factor, which Ulysses, cunningly dissembling, said, 
" My name is Noman : my kindred and friends in my 
own country call me Noman." — "Then," said the Cy- 
clop, "this is the kindness I will show thee, Noman : I 
will eat thee last of all thy friends." He had scarce 
expressed his savage kindness, when the fumes of the 
strong wine overcame him, and he reeled down upon 
the floor, and sank into a dead sleep. 

Ulysses watched his time while the monster lay in- 
sensible ; and, heartening up his men, they placed the 
sharp end of the stake in the fire till it was heated red- 
hot ; and some god gave them a courage beyond that 
which they were used to have, and the four men with 
difficulty bored the sharp end of the huge stake, which 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 233 

they had heated red-hot, right into the eye of the 
drunken cannibal ; and Ulysses helped to thrust it in 
with all his might still further and further, with effort, 
as men bore with an auger, till the scalded blood gushed 
out, and the eyeball smoked, and the strings of the eye 
cracked as the burning rafter broke in it, and the eye 
hissed as hot iron hisses when it is plunged into water. 

He, waking, roared with the pain, so loud that all the 
cavern broke into claps like thunder. They fled, and 
dispersed into corners. He plucked the burning stake 
from his eye, and hurled the wood madly about the cave. 
Then he cried out with a mighty voice for his brethren 
the Cyclops, that dwelt hard by in caverns upon hills. 
They, hearing the terrible shout, came flocking from 
all parts to inquire what ailed Polyphemus, and what 
cause he had for making such horrid clamors in the 
night-time to break their sleeps ; if his fright proceeded 
from any mortal ; if strength or craft had given him his 
death's blow. He made answer from within, that No- 
man had hurt him, Noman had killed him, Noman was 
with him in the cave. They replied, "If no man has 
hurt thee, and no man is with thee, then thou art alone ; 
and the evil that afflicts thee is from the hand of Heaven, 
which none can resist or help." So they left him, and 
went their way, thinking that some disease troubled him. 
He, blind, and ready to split with the anguish of the 
pain, went groaning up and down in the dark to find the 
doorway ; which when he found, he removed the stone, 
and sat in the threshold, feeling if he could lay hold on 
any man going out with the sheep, which (the day now 
breaking) were beginning to issue forth to their accus- 
tomed pastures. But Ulysses, whose first artifice in 



234 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

giving himself that ambiguous name had succeeded so 
well with the Cyclop, was not of a wit so gross to be 
caught by that palpable device ; but, casting about in 
his mind all the ways which he could contrive for escape 
(no less than all their lives depending on the success) , 
at last he thought of this expedient. He made knots 
of the osier twigs upon which the Cyclop commonly 
slept, with which he tied the fattest and fleeciest of the 
rams together, three in a rank ; and under the belly of 
the middle ram he tied a man, and himself last ; wrap- 
ping himself fast with both his hands in the rich wool 
of one, the fairest of the flock. 

And now the sheep began to issue forth very fast : 
the males went first ; the females, unmilked, stood by, 
bleating, and requiring the hand of their shepherd in 
vain to milk them, their full bags sore with being un- 
emptied, but he much sorer with the loss of sight. 
Still, as the males passed, he felt the backs of those 
fleecy fools, never dreaming that they carried his ene- 
mies under their bellies. So they passed on till the last 
ram came loaded with his wool and Ulysses together. 
He stopped that ram, and felt him, and had his hand 
once in the hair of Ulysses, yet knew it not ; and he 
chid the ram for being last, and spoke to it as if it un- 
derstood him, and asked it whether it did not wish that 
its master had his eye again, which that abominable 
Noman with his execrable rout had put out, when they 
had got him down with wine ; and he willed the ram to 
tell him whereabouts in the cave his enemy lurked, that 
he might dash his brains, and strew them about, to ease 
his heart of that tormenting revenge which rankled in it. 
After a deal of such foolish talk to the beast, he let it go. 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 235 

When Ulysses found himself free, he let go his hold, 
and assisted in disengaging his friends. The rams 
which had befriended them they carried off with them 
to the ships, where their companions, with tears in their 
eyes, received them as men escaped from death. They 
plied their oars, and set their sails ; and, when they were 
got as far off from shore as a voice could reach, Ulysses 
cried out to the Cyclop, "Cyclop, thou shouldst not 
have so much abused thy monstrous strength as to 
devour thy guests. Jove by my hand sends thee requi- 
tal to pay thy savage inhumanity." The Cyclop heard, 
and came forth enraged ; and in his anger he plucked a 
fragment of a rock, and threw it with blind fury at the 
ships. It narrowly escaped lighting upon the bark 
in which Ulysses sat ; but with the fall it raised so 
fierce an ebb as bore back the ship till it almost touched 
the shore. "Cyclop," said Ulysses, "if any ask thee 
who imposed on thee that unsightly blemish in thine 
eye, say it was Ulysses, son of Laertes : the King of 
Ithaca am I called, the waster of cities." Then they 
crowded sail, and beat the old sea, and forth they went 
with a forward gale, — sad for fore-past losses, yet glad 
to have escaped at any rate, — till they came to the isle 
where JEolus reigned, who is god of the winds. 

Here Ulysses and his men were courteously received 
by the monarch, who showed him his twelve children 
which have rule over the twelve winds. A month they 
staid and feasted with him ; and at the end of the month 
he dismissed them with many presents, and gave to 
Ulysses at parting an ox's hide, in which were enclosed 
all the winds : only he left abroad the western wind, to 
play upon their sails, and waft them gently home to 



236 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

Ithaca. This bag, bound in a glittering silver band so 
close that no breath could escape, Ulysses hung up at 
the mast. His companions did not know its contents, 
but guessed that the monarch had given to him some 
treasures of gold or silver. 

Nine days they sailed smoothly, favored by the west- 
ern wind ; and by the tenth they approached so nigh as 
to discern lights kindled on the shores of their country 
earth : when, by ill fortune, Ulysses, overcome with 
fatigue of watching the helm, fell asleep. The mariners 
seized the opportunity, and one of them said to the 
rest, " A fine time has this leader of ours : wherever he 
goes, he is sure of presents, when we come away empty- 
handed. And see what King iEolus has given him ! 
— store, no doubt, of gold and silver." A word was 
enough to those covetous wretches, who, quick as 
thought, untied the bag ; and, instead of gold, out 
rushed with mighty noise all the winds. Ulysses with 
the noise awoke, and saw their mistake, but too late : 
for the ship was driving with all the winds back far 
from Ithaca, far as to the Island of JEolus from which 
they had parted ; in one hour measuring back what in 
nine days they had scarcely tracked, and in sight of 
home too ! Up he flew amazed, and, raving, doubted 
whether he should not fling himself into the sea for 
grief of his bitter disappointment. At last, he hid 
himself under the hatches for shame. And scarce could 
he be prevailed upon, when he was told he was arrived 
again in the harbor of King ^Eolus, to go himself or 
send to that monarch for a second succor ; so much 
the disgrace of having misused his royal bounty (though 
it was the crime of his followers, and not his own) 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 237 

weighed upon him : and when at last he went, and took 
a herald with him, and came where the god sat on his 
throne, feasting with his children, he would not thrust 
in among them at their meat, but set himself down, like 
one unworthy, in the threshold. 

Indignation seized ^Eolus to behold him in that man- 
ner returned; and he said, "Ulysses, what has brought 
you back ? Are you so soon tired of your country ? or 
did not our present please you? We thought we had 
given you a kingly passport." Ulysses made answer : 
" My men have done this ill mischief to me : they did 
it while I slept." — "Wretch ! " said iEolus, "avaunt, 
and quit our shores ! it fits not us to convoy men whom 
the gods hate, and will have perish." 

Forth they sailed, but with far different hopes than 
when they left the same harbor the first time with all 
the winds confined, only the west wind suffered to play 
upon their sails to waft them in gentle murmurs to 
Ithaca. They were now the sport of every gale that 
blew, and despaired of ever seeing home more. Now 
those covetous mariners were cured of their surfeit for 
gold, and would not have touched it if it had lain in 
untold heaps before them. 

Six days and nights they drove along; and on the 
seventh day they put into Lamos, a port of the Laestry- 
gonians. So spacious this harbor was, that it held 
with ease all their fleet, which rode at anchor, safe from 
any storms, all but the ship in which Ulysses was em- 
barked. He, as if prophetic of the mischance which 
followed, kept still without the harbor, making fast his 
bark to a rock at the land's point, which he climbed 
with purpose to survey the country. He saw a city 



233 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

with smoke ascending from the roofs, but neither 
ploughs going, nor oxen yoked, nor any sign of agri- 
cultural works. Making choice of two men, he sent 
them to the city to explore what sort of inhabitants 
dwelt there. His messengers had not gone far before 
they met a damsel, of stature surpassing human, who 
was coming to draw water from a spring. They asked 
her who dwelt in that land. She made no reply, but 
led them in silence to her father's palace. He was a 
monarch, and named Antiphas. He and all his people 
were giants. When they entered the palace, a woman, 
the mother of the damsel, but far taller than she, rushed 
abroad, and called for Antiphas. He came, and, snatch- 
ing up one of the two men, made as if he would devour 
him. The other fled. Antiphas raised a mighty shout ; 
and instantly, this way and that, multitudes of gigantic 
people issued out at the gates, and, making for the har- 
bor, tore up huge pieces of the rocks, and flung them at 
the ships which lay there, — all which they utterly over- 
whelmed and sank ; and the unfortunate bodies of men 
which floated, and which the sea did not devour, these 
cannibals thrust through with harpoons, like fishes, and 
bore them off to their dire feast. Ulysses, with his sin- 
gle bark that had never entered the harbor, escaped ; 
that bark which was now the only vessel left of all the 
gallant navy that had set sail with him from Troy. 
He pushed off from the shore, cheering the sad remnant 
of his men, whom horror at the sight of their country- 
men's fate had almost turned to marble. 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 239 



CHAPTER II. 

THE HOUSE OE CIRCE. — MEN CHANGED INTO BEASTS. — THE VOYAGE TO 
HELL. — THE BANQUET OF THE DEAD. 

On went the single ship till it came to the Island of 
-ZEsea, where Circe, the dreadful daughter of the Sun, 
dwelt. She was deeply skilled in magic, a haughty 
beauty, and had hair like the Sun. The Sun was her 
parent, and begot her and her brother JEaetes (such 
another as herself) upon Perse, daughter to Oceanus. 

Here a dispute arose among Ulysses' men, which of 
them should go ashore, and explore the country ; for 
there was a necessity that some should go to procure 
water and provisions, their stock of both being nigh 
spent : but their hearts failed them when they called to 
mind the shocking fate of their fellows whom the Lses- 
trygonians had eaten, and those which the foul Cyclop 
Polyphemus had crushed between his jaws ; which 
moved them so tenderly in the recollection, that they 
wept. But tears never yet supplied any man's wants : 
this Ulysses knew full well ; and dividing his men (all 
that were left) into two companies, at the head of one 
of which was himself, and at the head of the other 
Eurylochus, a man of tried courage, he cast lots which 
of them should go up into the country ; and the lot fell 
upon Eurylochus and his company, two and twenty in 
number, who took their leave, with tears, of Ulysses 
and his men that staid, whose eyes wore the same wet 
badges of weak humanity ; for they surely thought 



240 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

never to see these their companions again, but that, on 
every coast where they should come, they should find 
nothing but savages and cannibals. 

Eurylochus and his party proceeded up the country, 
till in a dale they descried the house of Circe, built of 
bright stone, by the road's side. Before her gate lay 
many beasts, — as wolves, lions, leopards, — which, by 
her art, of wild she had rendered tame. These arose 
when they saw strangers, and ramped upon their hinder 
paws, and fawned upon Eurylochus and his men, who 
dreaded the effects of such monstrous kindness ; and, 
staying at the gate, they heard the enchantress within, 
sitting at her loom, singing such strains as suspended 
all mortal faculties, while she wove a web, subtile and 
glorious, and of texture inimitable on earth, as all the 
housewiferies of the deities are. Strains so ravishingly 
sweet provoked even the sagest and prudentist heads 
among the party to knock and call at the gate. The 
shining gate the enchantress opened, and bade them 
come in and feast. They unwise followed, all but 
Eurylochus, who staid without the gate, suspicious that 
some train was laid for them. Being entered, she 
placed them in chairs of state, and set before them meal 
and honey and Smyrna wine, but mixed with baneful 
drugs of powerful enchantment. When they had eaten 
of these, and drunk of her cup, she touched them with 
her charming-rod, and straight they were transformed 
into swine, — having the bodies of swine, the bristles 
and snout and grunting noise of that animal ; only they 
still retained the minds of men, which made them the 
more to lament their brutish transformation. Having 
changed them, she shut them up in her sty with many 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 241 

more whom her wicked sorceries had formerly changed, 
and gave them swine's food — mast and acorns and 
chestnuts — to eat. 

Eurvlochus. who beheld nothing of these sad changes 
from where he was stationed without the gate, only, 
instead of his companions that entered (who he thought 
had all vanished by witchcraft) , beheld a herd of swine, 
hurried back to the ship to give an account of what he 
had seen ; but so frighted and perplexed, that he could 
gii r no distinct report of anything: only he remem- 
bered a palace, and a woman singing at her work, and 
gates guarded by lions. But his companions, he said, 
were all vanished. 

Then Ulysses — suspecting some foul witchcraft — 
snatched his sword and his bow, and commanded Eurvlo- 
chus instantly to lead him to the place ; but Eurvlochus 
fell down, and, embracing his knees, besought him, by 
the name of a man whom the gods had in their protec- 
tion, not to expose his safety, and the safety of them 
all. to certain destruction. 

"Do thou then stay. Eurvlochus," answered Ulysses ; 
" eat thou and drink in the ship in safety, while I go 
alone upon this adventure : necessity, from whose law 
is no appeal, compels me." 

So saying, he quitted the ship, and went on shore, 
accompanied by none : none had the hardihood to offer 
to partake that perilous adventure with him, so much 
they dreaded the enchantments of the witch. Singly 
he pursued his journey till he came to the shining gates 
which stood before her mansion ; but, when he essayed 
to put his foot over her threshold, he was suddenly 
stopped by the apparition of a young man bearing a 

16 



242 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

golden rod in his hand, who was the god Mercury. 
He held Ulysses by the wrist, to stay his entrance ; and 
" Whither wouldest thou go," he said, "O thou most 
erring of the sons of men ? Knowest thou not that this 
is the house of great Circe, where she keeps thy friends 
in a loathsome sty, changed from the fair forms of men 
into the detestable and ugly shapes of swine ? Art thou 
prepared to share their fate, from which nothing can 
ransom thee?" But neither his words, nor his coming 
from heaven, could stop the daring foot of Ulysses, 
whom compassion for the misfortune of his friends had 
rendered careless of danger ; which when the god per- 
ceived, he had pity to see valor so misplaced, and gave 
him the flower of the herb moly, which is sovereign 
against enchantments. The moly is a small unsightly 
root, its virtues but little known, and in low estimation ; 
the dull shepherd treads on it every day with his clouted 
shoes : but it bears a small white flower, which is me- 
dicinal against charms, blights, mildews, and damps. 
" Take this in thy hand," said Mercury, " and with it 
boldly enter her gates : when she shall strike thee with 
her rod, thinking to change thee, as she has changed 
thy friends, boldly rush in upon her with thy sword, 
and extort from her the dreadful oath of the gods, that 
she will use no enchantments against thee ; then force 
her to restore thy abused companions." He gave 
Ulysses the little white flower ; and, instructing him 
how to use it, vanished. 

When the god was departed, Ulysses with loud 
knockings beat at the gate of the palace. The shining 
gates were opened as before, and great Circe with hos- 
pitable cheer invited in her guest. She placed him on 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 243 

a throne with more distinction than she had used to his 
fellows ; she mingled wine in a costly bowl, and he drank 
of it, mixed with those poisonous drugs. When he had 
drunk, she struck him with her charming-rod, and " To 
your sty ! " she cried. " Out, swine ! mingle with your 
companions." But those powerful words were not 
proof against the preservative which Mercury had given 
to Ulysses : he remained unchanged, and, as the god 
had directed him, boldly charged the witch with his 
sword, as if he meant to take her life ; which when she 
saw, and perceived that her charms were weak against 
the antidote which Ulysses bore about him, she cried 
out, and bent her knees beneath his sword, embracing 
his, and said, "Who or what manner of man art thou? 
Never drank any man before thee of this cup, but he 
repented it in some brute's form. Thy shape remains 
unaltered as thy mind. Thou canst be none other than 
Ulysses, renowned above all the world for wisdom, 
whom the Fates have long since decreed that I must 
love. This haughty bosom bends to thee. O Ithacan ! 
a goddess wooes thee to her bed." 

" O Circe ! " he replied, " how canst thou treat of love 
or marriage with one whose friends thou hast turned 
into beasts ? and now oiferest him thy hand in wedlock, 
only that thou mightest have him in thy power, to live 
the life of a beast with thee, — naked, effeminate, subject 
to thy will, perhaps to be advanced in time to the honor 
of a place in thy sty. What pleasure canst thou prom- 
ise which may tempt the soul of a reasonable man, — 
thy meats, spiced with poison ; or thy wines, drugged 
with death? Thou must swear to me, that thou wilt 
never attempt against me the treasons which thou hast 



244 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

practised upon my friends." The enchantress, won by 
the terror of his threats, or by the violence of that new 
love which she felt kindling in her veins for him, swore 
by Styx, the great oath of the gods, that she meditated 
no injury to him. Then Ulysses made show of gentler 
treatment, which gave her hopes of inspiring him with 
a passion equal to that which she felt. She called her 
handmaids, four that served her in chief, — who were 
daughters to her silver fountains, to her sacred rivers, 
and to her consecrated woods, — to deck her apartments, 
to spread rich carpets, and set out her silver tables with 
dishes of the purest gold, and meat as precious as that 
which the gods eat, to entertain her guest. One 
brought water to wash his feet ; and one brought wine 
to chase away, with a refreshing sweetness, the sorrows 
that had come of late so thick upon him, and hurt his 
noble mind. They strewed perfumes on his head ; and, 
after he had bathed in a bath of the choicest aromatics, 
they brought him rich and costly apparel to put on. 
Then he was conducted to a throne of massy silver ; and 
a regale, fit for Jove when he banquets, was placed 
before him. But the feast which Ulysses desired was 
to see his friends (the partners of his voyage) once 
more in the shapes of men ; and the food which could 
give him nourishment must be taken in at his eyes. 
Because he missed this sight, he sat melancholy and 
thoughtful, and would taste of none of the rich delica- 
cies placed before him ; which when Circe noted, she 
easily divined the cause of his sadness, and, leaving the 
seat in which she sat throned, went to her sty, and let 
abroad his men, who came in like swine, and filled the 
ample hall, where Ulysses sat, with gruntings. Hardly 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 245 

had he time to let his sad eye run over their altered 
forms and brutal metamorphosis, when, with an ointment 
which she smeared over them, suddenly their bristles 
fell off, and they started up in their own shapes, men 
as before. They knew their leader again, and clung 
about him, with joy of their late restoration, and some 
shame for their late change ; and wept so loud, blub- 
bering out their joy in broken accents, that the palace 
was filled with a sound of pleasing mourning ; and the 
witch herself, great Circe, was not unmoved at the 
sight. To make her atonement complete, she sent for 
the remnant of Ulysses' men who staid behind at the 
ship, giving up their great commander for lost ; who 
when they came, and saw him again alive, circled with 
their fellows, no expression can tell what joy they felt : 
they even cried out with rapture ; and, to have seen their 
frantic expressions of mirth, a man might have supposed 
that they were just in sight of their country earth, the 
cliffs of rocky Ithaca. Only Eurylochus would hardly 
be persuaded to enter that palace of wonders ; for he 
remembered with a kind of horror how his companions 
had vanished from his sight. 

Then great Circe spake, and gave order that there 
should be no more sadness among them, nor remember- 
ing of past sufferings. For as yet they fared like men 
that are exiles from their country ; and, if a gleam of 
mirth shot among them, it was suddenly quenched with 
the thought of their helpless and homeless condition. 
Her kind persuasions wrought upon Ulysses and the 
rest, that they spent twelve months in all manner of 
delight with her in her palace. For Circe was a power- 
ful magician, and could command the moon from her 



246 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

sphere, or unroot the solid oak from its place to make 
it dance for their diversion ; and by the help of her 
illusions she could vary the taste of pleasures, and 
contrive delights, recreations, and jolly pastimes, — to 
"fetch the day about from sun to sun, and rock the 
tedious year as in a delightful dream." 

At length, Ulysses awoke from the trance of the fac- 
ulties into which her charms had thrown him ; and the 
thought of home returned with tenfold vigor to goad 
and sting him, — that home where he had left his virtuous 
wife Penelope, and his young son Telemachus. One 
day, when Circe had been lavish of her caresses, and 
was in her kindest humor, he moved to her subtly, 
and as it were afar off, the question of his home-return ; 
to which she answered firmly, " O Ulysses ! it is not in 
my power to detain one whom the gods have destined 
to further trials. But leaving me, before you pursue 
your journey home, you must visit the house of Ades, 
or Death, to consult the shade of Tiresias, the Theban 
prophet; to whom alone, of all the dead, Proserpine, 
queen of hell, has committed the secret of future events : 
it is he that must inform you whether you shall ever see 
again your wife and country." — " O Circe ! " he cried ; 
" that is impossible : who shall steer my course to 
Pluto's kingdom? Never ship had strength to make 
that voyage." — "Seek no guide," she replied; "but 
raise you your mast, and hoist your white sails, and sit 
in your ship in peace : the north wind shall waft you 
through the seas, till you shall cross the expanse of the 
ocean, and come to where grow the poplar groves, and 
willows pale, of Proserpine ; where Pyriphlegethon and 
Cocytus and Acheron mingle their waves. Cocytus is 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 247 

an arm of Styx, the forgetful river. Here dig a pit, 
and make it a cubit broad and a cubit long ; and pour 
in milk and honey and wine, and the blood of a ram, 
and the blood of a black ewe ; and turn away thy face 
while thou pourest in, and the dead shall come flocking 
to taste the milk and the blood : but suffer none to 
approach thy offering till thou hast inquired of Tiresias 
all which thou wishest to know." 

He did as great Circe had appointed. He raised his 
mast, and hoisted his white sails, and sat in his ship in 
peace. The north wind wafted him through the seas, 
till he crossed the ocean, and came to the sacred woods 
of Proserpine. He stood at the confluence of the three 
floods, and digged a pit, as she had given directions, 
and poured in his offering, — the blood of a ram and 
the blood of a black ewe, milk and honey and wine ; 
and the dead came to his banquet, — aged men and 
women and youths, and children who died in infancy. 
But none of them would he suffer to approach, and dip 
their thin lips in the offering, till Tiresias was served, 
— not though his own mother was among the number, 
whom now for the first time he knew to be dead ; for he 
had left her living when he went to Troy ; and she had 
died since his departure, and the tidings never reached 
him : though it irked his soul to use constraint upon 
her, yet, in compliance with the injunction of great Circe, 
he forced her to retire along with the other ghosts. 
Then Tiresias, who bore a golden sceptre, came and 
lapped of the offering ; and immediately he knew Ulys- 
ses, and began to prophesy : he denounced woe to Ulys- 
ses, woe, woe, and many sufferings, through the anger of 
Neptune for the putting-out of the eye of the sea-god's son. 



248 . THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

Yet there was safety after suffering, if they could abstain 
from slaughtering the oxen of the Sun after they landed in 
the Triangular Island. For Ulysses, the gods had des- 
tined him from a king to become a beggar, and to perish 
by his own guests, unless he slew those who knew him not. 

This prophecy, ambiguously delivered, was all that 
Tiresias was empowered to unfold, or else there was no 
longer place for him ; for now the souls of the other 
dead came nocking in such numbers, tumultuously 
demanding the blood, that freezing horror seized the 
limbs of the living Ulysses, to see so many, and all 
dead, and he the only one alive in that region. Now 
his mother came and lapped the blood, without restraint 
from her son : and now she knew him to be her son, 
and inquired of him why he had come alive to their 
comfortless habitations ; and she said, that affliction 
for Ulysses' long absence had preyed upon her spirits, 
and brought her to the grave. 

Ulysses' soul melted at her moving narration ; and 
forgetting the state of the dead, and that the airy 
texture of disembodied spirits does not admit of the 
embraces of flesh and blood, he threw his arms about 
her to clasp her : the poor ghost melted from his 
embrace, and, looking mournfully upon him, vanished 
away. 

Then saw he other females, — Tyro, who, when she 
lived, was the paramour of Neptune, and by him had 
Pelias and Neleus ; Antiope, who bore two like sons 
to Jove, — Amphion and Zethus, founders of Thebes; 
Alcmena, the mother of Hercules, with her fair daugh- 
ter, afterwards her daughter-in-law, Megara. There 
also Ulysses saw Jocasta, the unfortunate mother and 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 249 

wife of CEdipus ; who, ignorant of kin, wedded with 
her son, and, when she had discovered the unnatural 
alliance, for shame and grief hanged herself. He con- 
tinued to drag a wretched life above the earth, haunted 
by the dreadful Furies. There was Leda, the wife of 
Tyndarus, the mother of the beautiful Helen, and of 
the two brave brothers, Castor and Pollux, who ob- 
tained this grace from Jove, — that, being dead, they 
should enjoy life alternately, living in pleasant places 
under the earth. For Pollux had prayed that his 
brother Castor, who was subject to death, as the son 
of Tyndarus, should partake of his own immortality, 
which he derived from an immortal sire : this the Fates 
denied ; therefore Pollux was permitted to divide his 
immortality with his brother Castor, dying and living 
alternately. There was Iphimedeia, who bore two sons 
to Neptune, that were giants, — Otus and Ephialtes : 
Earth in her prodigality never nourished bodies to such 
portentous size and beauty as these two children were 
of, except Orion. At nine years old they had imagina- 
tions of climbing to heaven to see what the gods were 
doing : they thought to make stairs of mountains, and 
.were for piling Ossa upon Olympus, and setting Pelion 
upon that ; and had perhaps performed it, if they had 
lived till they were striplings ; but they were cut off 
by death in the infancy of their ambitious project. 
Phaedra was there, and Procris and Ariadne, mournful 
for Theseus' desertion ; and Msera and Clymene and 
Eryphile, who preferred gold before wedlock faith. 

But now came a mournful ghost, that late was Aga- 
memnon, son of Atreus, the mighty leader of all the 
host of Greece and their confederate kings that warred 



250 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

against Troy. He came with the rest to sip a little of 
the blood at that uncomfortable banquet. Ulysses was 
moved with compassion to see him among them, and 
asked him what untimely fate had brought him there ; 
if storms had overwhelmed him coming from Troy, or 
if he had perished in some mutiny by his own soldiers 
at a division of the prey. 

" By none of these," he replied, " did I come to my 
death ; but slain at a banquet to which I was invited 
by .ZEgisthus after my return home. He conspiring 
with my adulterous wife, they laid a scheme for my 
destruction, training me forth to a banquet as an ox 
goes to the slaughter; and, there surrounding me, they 
slew me with all my friends about me. 

" Clytemnestra, my wicked wife, forgetting the vows 
which she swore to me in wedlock, would not lend a 
hand to close my eyes in death. But nothing is so 
heaped with impieties as such a woman, who would kill 
her spouse that married her a maid. When I brought 
her home to my house a bride, I hoped in my heart 
that she would be loving to me and to my children. 
Now her black treacheries have cast a foul aspersion 
on her whole sex. Blest husbands will have their lov- 
ing wives in suspicion for her bad deeds." 

"Alas ! " said Ulysses, "there seems to be a fatality 
in your royal house of Atreus, and that they are hated 
of Jove for their wives. For Helen's sake, your bro- 
ther Menelaus' wife, what multitudes fell in the wars 
of Troy ! " 

Agamemnon replied, "For this cause, be not thou 
more kind than wise to any woman. Let not thy 
words express to her at any time all that is in thy mind : 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 251 

keep still some secrets to thyself. But thou by any 
bloody contrivances of thy wife never needst fear to fall. 
Exceeding wise she is, and to her wisdom she has a 
goodness as eminent ; Icarius' daughter, Penelope the 
chaste : we left her a young bride when we parted from 
our wives to go to the wars, her first child suckling at 
her breast, — the young Telemachus, whom you shall see 
grown up to manhood on your return ; and he shall 
greet his father with befitting welcomes. My Orestes, 
my dear son, I shall never see again. His mother has 
deprived his father of the sight of him, and perhaps 
will slay him as she slew his sire. It is now no world 
to trust a woman in. — But what says fame ? is my 
son yet alive? lives he in Orchomen, or in Pylus? or is 
he resident in Sparta, in his uncle's court? As yet, I 
see, divine Orestes is not here with me." 

To this Ulysses replied, that he had received no cer- 
tain tidings where Orestes abode ; only some uncertain 
rumors, which he could not report for truth. 

While they held this sad conference, with kind 
tears striving to render unkind fortunes more palatable, 
the soul of great Achilles joined them. " What des- 
perate adventure has brought Ulysses to these regions ? " 
said Achilles : " to see the end of dead men, and their 
foolish shades ? " 

Ulysses answered him, that he had come to consult 
Tiresias respecting his voyage home. "But thou, O 
son of Thetis ! " said he, " why dost thou disparage the 
state of the dead ? Seeing that, as alive, thou didst sur- 
pass all men in glory, thou must needs retain thy pre- 
eminence here below : so great Achilles triumphs over 
death." 



252 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

But Achilles made reply, that he had much rather be 
a peasant-slave upon the earth, than reign over all the 
dead, — so much did the inactivity and slothful condi- 
tion of that state displease his unquenchable and restless 
spirit. Only he inquired of Ulysses if his father Peleus 
were living, and how his son Neoptolemus conducted 
himself. 

Of Peleus, Ulysses could tell him nothing; but of 
Neoptolemus he thus bore witness : " From Scyros I 
convoyed your son by sea to the Greeks ; where I can 
speak of him ; for I knew him. He was chief in coun- 
cil and in the field. When any question was proposed, 
so quick was his conceit in the forward apprehension 
of any case, that he ever spoke first, and was heard 
with more attention than the older heads. Only my- 
self and aged Nestor could compare with him in giving 
advice. In battle I cannot speak his praise, unless I 
could count all that fell by his sword. I will only 
mention one instance of his manhood. When we sat 
hid in the belly of the wooden horse, in the ambush 
which deceived the Trojans to their destruction, I, who 
had the management of that stratagem, still shifted my 
place from side to side to note the behavior of our men. 
In some I marked their hearts trembling, through all 
the pains which they took to appear valiant ; and, in 
others, tears, that, in spite of manly courage, would 
gush forth. And, to say truth, it was an adventure of 
high enterprise, and as perilous a stake as was ever 
played in war's game. But in him I could not observe 
the least sign of weakness ; no tears nor tremblings, but 
his hand still on his good sword, and ever urging me 
to set open the machine, and let us out before the time 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 253 

was come for doing it : and, when we sallied out, he was 
still first in that fierce destruction and bloody midnight 
desolation of King Priam's city." 

This made the soul of Achilles to tread a swifter 
pace, with high-raised feet, as he vanished away, for 
the joy which he took in his son being applauded by 
Ulysses. 

A sad shade stalked by, which Ulysses knew to be 
the ghost of Ajax, his opponent, when living, in that 
famous dispute about the right of succeeding to the arms 
of the deceased Achilles. They being adjudged by the 
Greeks to Ulysses, as the prize of wisdom above bodily 
strength, the noble Ajax in despite went mad, and slew 
himself. The sight of his rival, turned to a shade by 
his dispute, so subdued the passion of emulation in 
Ulysses, that, for his sake, he wished that judgment 
in that controversy had been given against himself, 
rather than so illustrious a chief should have perished 
for the desire of those arms which his prowess (second 
only to Achilles in fight) so eminently had deserved. 
" Ajax ! " he cried, " all the Greeks mourn for thee as 
much as they lamented for Achilles. Let not thy wrath 
burn for ever, great son of Telamon. Ulysses seeks 
peace with thee, and will make any atonement to thee 
that can appease thy hurt spirit." But the shade stalked 
on, and would not exchange a word with Ulysses, 
though he prayed it with many tears and many earnest 
entreaties. " He might have spoken to me," said Ulys- 
ses, " since I spoke to him ; but I see the resentments of 
the dead are eternal." 

Then Ulysses saw a throne, on which was placed a 
judge distributing sentence. He that sat on the throne 



254 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

was Minos, and he was dealing out just judgments to 
the dead. He it is that assigns them their place in bliss 
or woe. 

Then came by a thundering ghost, — the large-limbed 
Orion, the mighty hunter, who was hunting there the 
ghosts of the beasts which he had slaughtered in desert 
hills upon the earth ; for the dead delight in the occu- 
pations which pleased them in the time of their living 
upon the earth. 

There was Tityus, suffering eternal pains because he 
had sought to violate the honor of Latona as she passed 
from Pytho into Panopeus. Two vultures sat perpetu- 
ally preying upon his liver with their crooked beaks ; 
which, as fast as they devoured, is for ever renewed : 
nor can he fray them away with his great hands. 

There was Tantalus, plagued for his great sins, 
standing up to his chin in water, which he can never 
taste ; but still, as he bows his head, thinking to quench 
his burning thirst, instead of water he licks up unsa- 
vory dust. All fruits pleasant to the sight, and of de- 
licious flavor, hang in ripe clusters about his head, 
seeming as though they offered themselves to be plucked 
by him ; but, when he reaches out his hand, some wind 
carries them far out of his sight into the clouds : so he 
is starved in the midst of plenty by the righteous doom 
of Jove, in memory of that inhuman banquet at which 
the sun turned pale, when the unnatural father served 
up the limbs of his little son in a dish, as meat for his 
divine guests. 

There was Sisyphus, that sees no end to his labors. 
His punishment is, to be for ever rolling up a vast stone 
to the top of a mountain ; which, when it gets to the 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 255 

top, falls down with a crushing weight, and all his 
work is to be begun again. He was bathed all over in 
sweat, that reeked out a smoke which covered his head 
like a mist. His crime had been the .revealing of state 
secrets. 

There Ulysses saw Hercules : not that Hercules who 
enjoys immortal life in heaven among the gods, and is 
married to Hebe, or Youth ; but his shadow, which re- 
mains below. About him the dead flocked as thick as 
bats, hovering around, and cuffing at his head : he 
stands with his dreadful bow, ever in the act to shoot. 

There also might Ulysses have seen and spoken with 
the shades of Theseus and Pirithous and the old heroes ; 
but he had conversed enough with horrors : therefore, 
covering Ms face with his hands that he might see no 
more spectres, he resumed his seat in his ship, and 
pushed off- The bark moved of itself, without the help 
of any oar, and soon brought him out of the regions of 
death into the cheerful quarters of the living, and to 
the Island of iEsea, whence he had set forth. 



CHAP TEE III. 

THE SONG OF THE SIRENS. — SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS. — THE OXEN OP THE 
SUN. — THE JUDGMENT. — THE CREW KILLED BY LIGHTNING. 

"Unhappy man, who at thy birth wast appointed 
twice to die ! Others shall die once ; but thou, besides 
that death that remains for thee, common to all men, 
hast in thy lifetime visited the shades of death. Thee 
Scylla, thee Charybdis, expect. Thee the deathful 
Sirens lie in wait for, that taint the minds of whoever 



256 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 



listen to them with their sweet singing. Whosoever 
shall but hear the call of any Siren, he will so despise 
both wife and children, through their sorceries, that the 
stream of his affection never again shall set homewards ; 
nor shall he take joy in wife or children thereafter, or 
they in him." 

With these prophetic greetings great Circe met 
Ulysses on his return. He besought her to instruct 
him in the nature of the Sirens, and by what method 
their baneful allurements were to be resisted. 

" They are sisters three," she replied, " that sit in a 
mead (by which your ship must needs pass) circled 
with dead men's bones. These are the bones of men 
whom they have slain, after with fawning invitements 
they have enticed them into their fen. Yet such is the 
celestial harmony of their voice accompanying the per- 
suasive magic of their words, that, knowing this, you 
shall not be able to withstand their enticements. There- 
fore, when you are to sail by them, you shall stop the 
ears of your companions with wax, that they may hear 
no note of that dangerous music ; but for yourself, that 
you may hear, and yet live, give them strict command 
to bind you hand and foot to the mast, and in no case 
to set you free till you are out of the danger of the 
temptation, though you should entreat it, and implore 
it ever so much, but to bind you rather the more for 
your requesting to be loosed. So shall you escape that 
snare." 

Ulysses then prayed her that she would inform him 
what Scylla and Charybdis were, which she had taught 
him by name to fear. She replied, " Sailing from ^Eaea 
to Trinacria, you must pass at an equal distance be- 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 257 

tween two fatal rocks. Incline never so little either 
to the one side or the other, and your ship must meet 
with certain destruction. No vessel ever yet tried that 
pass without being lost, but the f Argo,' which owed her 
safety to the sacred freight she bore, — the fleece of 
the golden-backed ram, which could not perish. The 
biggest of these rocks which you shall come to, Scylla 
hath in charge. There, in a deep whirlpool at the foot 
of the rock, the abhorred monster shrouds her face ; 
who if she were to show her full form, no eye of man 
or god could endure the sight : thence she stretches out 
all her six long necks, peering and diving to suck up 
fish, dolphins, dog-fish, and whales, whole ships and 
their men, — whatever comes within her raging gulf. 
The other rock is lesser, and of less ominous aspect ; 
but there dreadful Charybdis sits, supping the black 
deeps. Thrice a day she drinks her pits dry, and 
thrice a day again she belches them all up : but, when 
she is drinking, come not nigh ; for, being once caught, 
the force of Neptune cannot redeem you from her 
swallow. Better trust to Scylla ; for she will but have 
for her six necks six men : Charybdis, in her insatiate 
draught, will ask all." 

Then Ulysses inquired, in case he should escape 
Charybdis, whether he might not assail that other mon- 
ster with his sword : to which she replied, that he must 
not think that he had an enemy subject to death or 
wounds to contend with ; for Scylla could never die. 
Therefore his best safety was in flight, and to invoke 
none of the gods but Gratis, who is Scylla's mother, 
and might perhaps forbid her daughter to devour them. 
For his conduct after he arrived at Trinacria, she referred 

17 



258 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

him to the admonitions which had been given him by 
Tiresias. 

Ulysses having communicated her instructions, as far 
as related to the Sirens, to his companions, who had 
not been present at that interview, — but concealing from 
them the rest, as he had done the terrible predictions 
of Tiresias, that they might not be deterred by fear 
from pursuing their voyage, — the time for departure 
being come, they set their sails, and took a final leave 
of great Circe ; who by her art calmed the heavens, 
and gave them smooth seas, and a right fore-wind 
(the seaman's friend) to bear them on their way to 
Ithaca. 

They had not sailed past a hundred leagues, before the 
breeze which Circe had lent them suddenly stopped. 
It was stricken dead. All the sea lay in prostrate 
slumber. Not a gasp of air could be felt. The ship 
stood still. Ulysses guessed that the island of the Sirens 
was not far off, and that they had charmed the air so 
with their devilish singing. Therefore he made him 
cakes of wax, as Circe had instructed him, and stopped 
the ears of his men with them : then, causing himself 
to be bound hand and foot, he commanded the rowers 
to ply their oars, and row as fast as speed could carry 
them past that fatal shore. They soon came within 
sight of the Sirens, who sang in Ulysses' hearing, — 

" Come here, thou, worthy of a world of praise, 
That dost so high the Grecian glory raise, — 
Ulysses ! Stay thy ship, and that song hear 
That none passed ever, but it bent his ear, 
But left him ravished, and instructed more 
By us than any ever heard before. 
For we know all things, — whatsoever were 
In wide Troy labored ; whatsoever there 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 259 

The Grecians and the Trojans both sustained 
By those high issues that the gods ordained : 
And whatsoever all the earth can show, 
To inform a knowledge of desert, we know." 

These were the words ; but the celestial harmony of 
the voices which sang them no tongue can describe : it 
took the ear of Ulysses with ravishment. He would 
have broken his bonds to rush after them ; and threat- 
ened, wept, sued, entreated, commanded, crying out 
with tears and passionate imprecations, conjuring his 
men by all the ties of perils past which they had en- 
dured in common, by fellowship and love, and the 
authority which he retained among them, to let him 
loose ; but at no rate would they obey him. And still 
the Sirens sang. Ulysses made signs, motions, ges- 
tures, promising mountains of gold if they would set 
him free ; but their oars only moved faster. And still 
the Sirens sang. And still, the more he adjured them to 
set him free, the faster with cords and ropes they bound 
him ; till they were quite out of hearing of the Sirens' 
notes, whose effect great Circe had so truly predicted. 
And well she might speak of them ; for often she had 
joined her own enchanting voice to theirs, while she has 
sat in the flowery meads, mingled with the Sirens and 
the Water Nymphs, gathering their potent herbs and 
drugs of magic quality. Their singing altogether has 
made the gods stoop, and "heaven drowsy with the 
harmony." 

Escaped that peril, they had not sailed yet a hundred 
leagues further, when they heard a roar afar off, which 
Ulysses knew to be the barking of Scylla's dogs, which 
surround her waist, and bark incessantly. Coming 
nearer, they beheld a smoke ascend, with a horrid mur- 



260 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

mur, which arose from that other whirlpool, to which 
they made nigher approaches than to Scylla. Through 
the furious eddy which is in that place, the ship stood 
still as a stone : for there was no man to lend his hand 
to an oar ; the dismal roar of Scylla's dogs at a distance, 
and the nearer clamors of Charybdis, where every thing 
made an echo, quite taking from them the power of exer- 
tion. Ulysses went up and down, encouraging his men, 
one by one ; giving them good words ; telling them that 
they were in greater perils when they were blocked up 
in the Cy clop's cave ; yet, Heaven assisting his counsels, 
he had delivered them out of that extremity. That he 
could not believe but they remembered it ; and wished 
them to give the same trust to the same care which he 
had now for their welfare. That they must exert all 
the strength and wit which they had, and try if Jove 
would not grant them an escape, even out of this peril. 
In particular, he cheered up the pilot who sat at the 
helm, and told him that he must show more firmness 
than other men, as he had more trust committed to him ; 
and had the sole management, by his skill, of the vessel 
in which all their safeties were embarked. That a rock 
lay hid within those boiling whirlpools which he saw, 
on the outside of which he must steer, if he would avoid 
his own destruction, and the destruction of them all. 

They heard him, and, like men, took to the oars ; but 
little knew what opposite danger, in shunning that rock, 
they must be thrown upon. For Ulysses had concealed 
from them the wounds, never to be healed, which Scylla 
was to open : their terror would else have robbed them 
all of all care to steer, or move an oar, and have made 
them hide under the hatches, for fear of seeing her, 



THE ADVENTUKES OF ULYSSES. 261 

where he and they must have died an idle death. But, 
even then, he forgot the precautions which Circe had 
given him to prevent harm to his person ; who had 
willed him not to arm, or show himself once to Scylla : 
but, disdaining not to venture life for his brave com- 
panions, he could not contain, but armed in all points, 
and taking a lance in either hand, he went up to the 
fore-deck, and looked when Scylla would appear. 

She did not show herself as yet ; and still the vessel 
steered closer by her rock, as it sought to shun that 
other more dreaded : for they saw how horribly Charyb- 
dis' black throat drew into her all the whirling deep, 
which she disgorged again ; that all about her boiled like 
a kettle, and the rock roared with troubled waters ; 
which when she supped in again, all the bottom turned 
up, and disclosed far under shore the swart sands naked, 
whose whole stern sight frayed the startled blood from 
their faces, and made Ulysses turn his to view the won- 
der of whirlpools. Which when Scylla saw from out 
her black den, she darted out her six long necks, and 
swooped up as many of his friends ; whose cries Ulysses 
heard, and saw them too late, with their heels turned 
up, and their hands thrown to him for succor, who had 
been their help in all extremities, but could not deliver 
them now ; and he heard them shriek out as she tore 
them ; and, to the last, they continued to throw their 
hands out to him for sweet life. In all his sufferings, 
he never had beheld a sight so full of miseries. 

Escaped from Scylla and Charybdis, but with a dimin- 
ished crew, Ulysses and the sad remains of his follow- 
ers reached the Trinacrian shore. Here, landing, he 
beheld oxen grazing, of such surpassing size and beauty, 



262 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

that, both from them and from the shape of the island 
(having three promontories jutting into the sea), he 
judged rightly that he was come to the Triangular Island, 
and the oxen of the Sun, of which Tiresias had fore- 
warned him. 

So great was his terror, lest through his own fault, 
or that of his men, any violence or profanation should 
be offered to the holy oxen, that even then, tired as they 
were with the perils and fatigues of the day past, and 
unable to stir an oar or use any exertion, and though 
night was fast coming on, he would have had them re- 
embark immediately, and make the best of their way 
from that dangerous station : but his men, with one 
voice, resolutely opposed it ; and even the too-cautious 
Eurylochus himself withstood the proposal ; so much 
did the temptation of a little ease and refreshment (ease 
tenfold sweet after such labors) prevail over the sagest 
counsels, and the apprehension of certain evil outweigh 
the prospect of contingent danger. They expostulated, 
that the nerves of Ulysses seemed to be made of steel, 
and his limbs not liable to lassitude like other men's ; 
that waking or sleeping seemed indifferent to him ; but 
that they were men, not gods, and felt the common ap- 
petites for food and sleep ; that, in the night-time, all 
the winds most destructive to ships are generated ; that 
black night still required to be served with meat and 
sleep, and quiet havens and ease ; that the best sacrifice 
to the sea was in the morning. With such sailor-like 
sayings and mutinous arguments, which the majority 
have always ready to justify disobedience to their betters, 
they forced Ulysses to comply with their requisition, 
and, against his will, to take up his night-quarters on 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 263 

shore. But he first exacted from them an oath, that 
they would neither maim nor kill any of the cattle 
which they saw grazing, but content themselves with 
such food as Circe had stowed their vessel with when 
they parted from ^Easa. This they, man by man, 
severally promised, imprecating the heaviest curses on 
whoever should break it ; and, mooring their bark with- 
in a creek, they went to supper, contenting themselves 
that night with such food as Circe had given them, not 
without many sad thoughts of their friends whom Scylla 
had devoured, the grief of which kept them, great part 
of the night, waking. 

In the morning, Ulysses urged them again to a reli- 
gious observance of the oath that they had sworn ; not 
in any case to attempt the blood of those fair herds which 
they saw grazing, but to content themselves with the 
ship's food ; for the god who owned those cattle sees and 
hears all. 

They faithfully obeyed, and remained in that good 
mind for a month ; during which they were confined to 
that station by contrary winds, till all the wine and the 
bread were gone which they had brought with them. 
When their victuals were gone, necessity compelled them 
to stray in quest of whatever fish or fowl they could 
snare, which that coast did not yield in any great abun- 
dance. Then Ulysses prayed to all the gods that dwelt 
in bountiful heaven, that they would be pleased to 
yield them some means to stay their hunger, without 
having recourse to profane and forbidden violations : 
but the ears of heaven seemed to be shut, or some god 
incensed plotted his ruin ; for at mid-day, when he 
should chiefly have been vigilant and watchful to prevent 



264 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

mischief, a deep sleep fell upon the eyes of Ulysses, 
during which he lay totally insensible of all that passed 
in the world, and what his friends or what his enemies 
might do for his welfare or destruction. Then Euryl- 
ochus took his advantage. He was the man of most 
authority with them after Ulysses. He represented to 
them all the misery of their condition : how that every 
death is hateful and grievous to mortality ; but that, of 
all deaths, famine is attended with the most painful, 
loathsome, and humiliating circumstances ; that the sub- 
sistence which they could hope to draw from fowling 
or fishing was too precarious to be depended upon ; that 
there did not seem to be any chance of the winds chan- 
ging to favor their escape ; but that they must inevitably 
stay there and perish, if they let an irrational superstition 
deter them from the means which Nature offered to their 
hands ; that Ulysses might be deceived in his belief that 
these oxen had any sacred qualities above other oxen ; 
and even admitting that they were the property of the 
god of the Sun, as he said they were, the Sun did neither 
eat nor drink ; and the gods were best served, not by a 
scrupulous conscience, but by a thankful heart, which 
took freely what they as freely offered. With these and 
such like persuasions, he prevailed on his half-famished 
and half-mutinous compani6ns to begin the impious 
violation of their oath by the slaughter of seven of the 
fairest of these oxen which were grazing. Part they 
roasted and ate, and part they offered in sacrifice to the 
gods ; particularly to Apollo, god of the Sun, vowing 
to build a temple to his godhead when they should arrive 
in Ithaca, and deck it with magnificent and numerous 
gifts. Vain men, and superstition worse than that which 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 265 

they so lately derided, to imagine that prospective peni- 
tence can excuse a present violation of duty, and that the 
pure natures of the heavenly powers will admit of com- 
promise or dispensation for sin ! 

But to their feast they fell ; dividing the roasted por- 
tions of the flesh, savory and pleasant meat to them, but 
a sad sight to the eyes, and a savor of death in the 
nostrils, of the waking Ulysses, who just woke in time 
to witness, but not soon enough to prevent, their rash 
and sacrilegious banquet. He had scarce time to ask 
what great mischief was this which they had done unto 
him, when, behold, a prodigy ! The ox-hides which they 
had stripped began to creep as if they had life ; and the 
roasted flesh bellowed, as the ox used to do when he 
was living. The hair of Ulysses stood up an end with 
affright at these omens ; but his companions, like men 
whom the gods had infatuated to their destruction, per- 
sisted in their horrible banquet. 

The Sun, from his burning chariot, saw how Ulysses' 
men had slain his oxen ; and he cried to his father Jove, 
"Revenge me upon these impious men, who have slain 
my oxen, which it did me good to look upon when I 
walked my heavenly round. In all my daily course, 
I never saw such bright and beautiful creatures as those 
my oxen were." The father promised that ample retri- 
bution should be taken of those accursed men ; which 
was fulfilled shortly after, when they took their leaves 
of the fatal island. 

Six days they feasted, in spite of the signs of heaven ; 
and on the seventh, the wind changing, they set their 
sails, and left the island : and their hearts were cheerful 
with the banquets they had held ; all but the heart of 



266 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

Ulysses, which sank within him, as with wet eyes he 
beheld his friends, and gave them for lost, as men 
devoted to divine vengeance. Which soon overtook 
them ; for they had not gone many leagues before a 
dreadful tempest arose which burst their cables. Down 
came their mast, crushing the skull of the pilot in its 
fall : off he fell from the stern into the water ; and the 
bark, wanting his management, drove along at the wind's 
mercy. Thunders roared, and terrible lightnings of 
Jove came down : first a bolt struck Eurylochus, then 
another, and then another, till all the crew were killed, 
and their bodies swam about like sea-mews ; and the 
ship was split in pieces. Only Ulysses survived ; and 
he had no hope of safety but in tying himself to the 
mast, where he sat riding upon the waves, like one that 
in no extremity would yield to fortune. Nine days was 
he floating about with all the motions of the sea, with 
no other support than the slender mast under him, till 
the tenth night cast him, all spent and weary with toil, 
upon the friendly shores of the Island Ogygia. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE ISLAND OF CALYPSO. — IMMORTALITY REFUSED. 

Henceforth the adventures of the single Ulysses 
must be pursued. Of all those faithful partakers of 
his toil, who with him left Asia, laden with the spoils 
of Troy, now not one remains, but all a prey to the 
remorseless waves, and food for some great fish ; their 
gallant navy reduced to one ship, and that finally swal- 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 267 

lowed up and lost. Where now are all their anxious 
thoughts of home ? that perseverance with which they 
went through the severest sufferings and the hardest 
labors to which poor seafarers were ever exposed, that 
their toils at last might be crowned with the sight of 
their native shores and wives at Ithaca ? Ulysses is now 
in the Isle Ogygia, called the Delightful Island. The 
poor shipwrecked chief, the slave of all the elements, is 
once again raised by the caprice of fortune into a shad- 
ow of prosperity. He that was cast naked upon the 
shore, bereft of all his companions, has now a goddess 
to attend upon him ; and his companions are the nymphs 
which never die. Who has not heard of Calypso, — 
her grove crowned with alders and poplars ; her grotto, 
against which the luxuriant vine laid forth his purple 
grapes; her ever-new delights, crystal fountains, run- 
ning brooks, meadows flowering with sweet balm-gentle 
and with violet, — blue violets, which, like veins, enam- 
elled the smooth breasts of each fragrant mead ? It were 
useless to describe over again what has been so well 
told already, or to relate those soft arts of courtship 
which the goddess used to detain Ulysses, — the same in 
kind which she afterwards practised upon his less wary 
son, whom Minerva, in the shape of Mentor, hardly 
preserved from her snares, when they came to the De- 
lightful Island together in search of the scarce departed 
Ulysses. 

A memorable example of married love, and a worthy 
instance how dear to every good man his country is, 
was exhibited by Ulysses. If Circe loved him sincerely, 
Calypso loves him with tenfold more warmth and pas- 
sion. She can deny him nothing but his departure. 



268 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

She offers him every thing, even to a participation of 
her immortality : if he will stay and share in her pleas- 
ures, he shall never die. But death with glory has 
greater charms for a mind heroic than a life that shall 
never die, with shame ; and, when he pledged his vows 
to his Penelope, he reserved no stipulation that he 
would forsake her whenever a goddess should think him 
worthy of her bed, but they had sworn to live and grow 
old together : and he would not survive her if he could ; 
nor meanly share in immortality itself, from which she 
was excluded. 

These thoughts kept him pensive and melancholy in 
the midst of pleasure. His heart was on the seas, 
making voyages to Ithaca. Twelve months had worn 
away, when Minerva from heaven saw her favorite ; 
how he sat still pining on the sea -shores (his daily 
custom), wishing for a ship to carry him home. She 
(who is Wisdom herself) was indignant that so wise 
and brave a man as Ulysses should be held in effemi- 
nate bondage by an unworthy goddess ; and, at her 
request, her father Jove ordered Mercury to go down 
to the earth to command Calypso to dismiss her guest. 
The divine messenger tied fast to his feet his winged 
shoes, which bear him over land and seas ; and took in 
his hand his golden rod, the ensign of his authority. 
Then, wheeling in many an airy round, he staid not 
till he alighted on the firm top of the Mountain Pieria : 
thence he fetched a second circuit over the seas, kissing 
the waves in his flight with his feet, as light as any sea- 
mew fishing dips her wings, till he touched the Isle 
Ogygia, and soared up from the blue sea to the grotto 
of the goddess, to whom his errand was ordained. 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 269 

His message struck a horror, checked by love, 
through all the faculties of Calypso. She replied to it, 
incensed, ff You gods are insatiate, past all that live, 
in all things which you affect ; which makes you so 
envious and orudonno-. It afflicts you to the heart 
when any goddess seeks the love of a mortal man in 
marriage, though you yourselves without scruple link 
yourselves to women of the earth. So it fared with 
you when the delicious-fingered Morning shared Orion's 
bed : you could never satisfy your hate and your jeal- 
ousy till you had incensed the chastity-loving dame, 
Diana, who leads the precise life, to come upon him by 
stealth in Ortygia, and pierce him through with her 
arrows. And when rich-haired Ceres gave the reins 
to her affections, and took lasion (well worthy) to her 
arms, the secret was not so cunningly kept but Jove 
had soon notice of it ; and the poor mortal paid for his 
felicity with death, struck through with lightnings. 
And now you envy me the possession of a wretched 
man, whom tempests have cast upon my shores, making 
him lawfully mine ; whose ship Jove rent in pieces 
with his hot thunderbolts, killing all his friends. Him 
I have preserved, loved, nourished ; made him mine by 
protection; my creature, — by every tie of gratitude, 
mine ; have vowed to make him deathless like myself : 
him you will take from me. But I know your power, 
and that it is vain for me to resist. Tell your king- 
that I obey his mandates." 

With an ill grace, Calypso promised to fulfil the 
commands of Jove ; and, Mercury departing, she went 
to find Ulysses, where he sat outside the grotto, not 
knowing of the heavenly message, drowned in dis- 



270 THE ADVENTURES ■ OF ULYSSES. 

content, not seeing any human probability of his ever 
returning home. 

She said to him, "Unhappy man, no longer afflict 
yourself with pining after your country, but build you 
a ship, with which you may return home ; since it is 
the will of the gods ; who doubtless, as they are greater 
in power than I, are greater in skill, and best can tell 
what is fittest for man. But I call the gods, and my 
inward conscience, to witness, that I had no thought 
but what stood with thy safety, nor would have done or 
counselled any thing against thy good. I persuaded 
thee to nothing which I should not have followed my- 
self in thy extremity ; for my mind is innocent and 
simple. Oh ! if thou knewest what dreadful sufferings 
thou must yet endure, before ever thou reachest thy 
native land, thou wouldest not esteem so hardly of a 
goddess's offer to share her immortality with thee ; nor, 
for a few years' enjoyment of a perishing Penelope, 
refuse an imperishable and never-dying life with Calyp- 
so." 

He replied, "Ever-honored, great Calypso, let it not 
displease thee, that I, a mortal man, desire to see and 
converse again with a wife that is mortal : human 
objects are best fitted to human infirmities. I well 
know how far in wisdom, in feature, in stature, pro- 
portion, beauty, in all the gifts of the mind, thou ex- 
ceedest my Penelope : she is a mortal, and subject to 
decay ; thou immortal, ever growing, yet never old : 
yet in her sight all my desires terminate, all my wishes ; 
in the sight of her, and of my country earth. If any 
god, envious of my return, shall lay his dreadful hand 
upon me as I pass the seas, I submit ; for the same 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 271 

powers have given me a mind not to sink under oppres- 
sion. In wars and waves, my sufferings have not been 
small." 

She heard his pleaded reasons, and of force she must 
assent : so to her nymphs she gave in charge from her 
sacred woods to cut down timber, to make Ulysses a 
ship. They obeyed, though in a work unsuitable to 
their soft fingers ; yet to obedience no sacrifice is hard : 
and Ulysses busily bestirred himself, laboring far more 
hard than they, as was fitting, till twenty tall trees, 
driest and fittest for timber, were felled. Then, like a 
skilful shipwright, he fell to joining the planks ; using 
the plane, the axe, and the auger, with such expedition, 
that in four days' time a ship was made, complete with 
all her decks, hatches, side-boards, yards. Calypso 
added linen for the sails, and tackling ; and, when she 
was finished, she was a goodly vessel for a man to sail 
in, alone or in company, over the wide seas. By the 
fifth morning, she was launched ; and Ulysses, furnished 
with store of provisions, rich garments, and gold and 
silver, given him by Calypso, took a last leave of her 
and of her nymphs, and of the Isle Ogygia which had 
so befriended him. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE TEMPEST. — THE SEA-BIRD'S GIFT. — THE ESCAPE BY SWIMMING. — 
THE SLEEP IN THE WOODS. 

At the stern of his solitary ship, Ulysses sat, and steered 
right artfully. No sleep could seize his eyelids. He 
beheld the Pleiads, the Bear, which is by some called 



272 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

the Wain, that moves round about Orion, and keeps 
still above the ocean ; and the slow-setting sign Bootes, 
which some name the Wagoner. Seventeen days he 
held his course ; and, on the eighteenth, the coast of 
Phasacia was in sight. The figure of the land, as seen 
from the sea, was pretty and circular, and looked some- 
thing like a shield. 

Neptune, returning from visiting his favorite ^Ethi- 
opians, from the mountains of the Solymi descried 
Ulysses ploughing the waves, his domain. The sight 
of the man he so much hated for Polyphemus' sake, his 
son, whose eye Ulysses had put out, set the god's heart 
on fire ; and snatching into his hand his horrid sea- 
sceptre, the trident of his power, he smote the air and 
the sea, and conjured up all his black storms, calling 
down night from the cope of heaven, and taking the 
earth into the sea, as it seemed, with clouds, through 
the darkness and indistinctness which prevailed ; the 
billows rolling up before the fury of all the winds, that 
contended together in their mighty sport. 

Then the knees of Ulysses bent with fear, and then 
all his spirit was spent ; and he wished that he had been 
among the number of his countrymen who fell before 
Troy, and had their funerals celebrated by all the 
Greeks, rather than to perish thus, where no man could 
mourn him or know him. 

As he thought these melancholy thoughts, a huge 
wave took him, and washed him overboard: ship and all 
upset amidst the billows ; he struggling afar off, clinging 
to her stern broken off, which he yet held ; her mast 
cracking in two with the fury of that gust of mixed 
winds that struck it ; sails and sail-yards fell into the 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 273 

deep ; and he himself was long drowned under water, 
nor could get his head above, wave so met with wave, 
as if they strove which should depress him most ; and 
the gorgeous garments given him by Calypso clung 
about him, and hindered his swimming. Yet neither for 
this, nor for the overthrow of his ship, nor his own 
perilous condition, would he give up his drenched ves- 
sel ; but, wrestling with Neptune, got at length hold 
of her again, and then sat in her hull, insulting 
over death, which he had escaped, and the salt waves, 
which he gave the seas again to give to other men. 
His ship, striving to live, floated at random, cuffed from 
wave to wave, hurled to and fro by all the winds : now 
Boreas tossed it to Notus, Notus passed it to Eurus, 
and Eurus to the West Wind, who kept up the horrid 
tennis. 

Them in their mad sport Ino Leucothea beheld, — Ino 
Leucothea, now a sea-goddess, but once a mortal, and 
the daughter of Cadmus. She with pity beheld Ulysses 
the mark of their fierce contention ; and, rising from the 
waves, alighted on the ship, in shape like to the sea-bird 
which is called a cormorant ; and in her beak she held a 
wonderful girdle made of sea- weeds, which grow at the 
bottom of the ocean, which she dropped at his feet ; and 
the bird spake to Ulysses, and counselled him not to 
trust any more to that fatal vessel against which God 
Neptune had levelled his furious wrath, nor to those ill- 
befriending garments which Calypso had given him, but 
to quit both it and them, and trust for his safety to 
swimming. "And here," said the seeming bird: " take 
this girdle, and tie about your middle, which has virtue 
to protect the wearer at sea, and you shall safely reach 

18 



274 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

the shore ; but, when you have landed, cast it far from 
you back into the sea." He did as the sea-bird in- 
structed him : he stripped himself naked, and, fastening 
the wondrous girdle about his middle, cast himself 
into the seas to swim. The bird dived past his sight 
into the fathomless abyss of the ocean. 

Two days and two nights he spent in struggling with 
the waves, though sore buffeted, and almost spent, never 
giving up himself for lost ; such confidence he had in 
that charm which he wore about his middle, and in the 
words of that divine bird. But, the third morning, 
the winds grew calm, and all the heavens were clear. 
Then he saw himself nigh land, which he knew to be 
the coast of the Phasacians, a people good to strangers, 
and abounding in ships ; by whose favor he doubted not 
that he should soon obtain a passage to his own country. 
And such joy he conceived in his heart as good sons 
have, that esteem their father's life dear, when long 
sickness has held him down to his bed, and wasted his 
body, and they see at length health return to the old 
man, with restored strength and spirits, in reward of 
their many prayers to the gods for his safety : so pre- 
cious was the prospect of home-return to Ulysses, that 
he might restore health to his country (his better pa- 
rent) , that had long languished as full of distempers in 
his absence. And then for his own safety's sake he had 
joy to see the shores, the woods, so nigh and within 
his grasp as they seemed ; and he labored with all the 
might of hands and feet to reach with swimming that 
nigh-seeming land. 

But, when he approached near, a horrid sound of a 
huge sea beating against rocks informed him that here 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 275 

was no place for landing, nor any harbor for man's re- 
sort : but, through the weeds and the foam which the sea 
belched up against the land, he could dimly discover the 
rugged shore all bristled with flints, and all that part 
of the coast one impending rock, that seemed impossible 
to climb ; and the water all about so deep, that not a 
sand was there for any tired foot to rest upon ; and 
every moment he feared lest some wave more cruel than 
the rest should crush him against a cliff, rendering worse 
than vain all his landing : and, should he swim to seek 
a more commodious haven farther on, he was fearful, 
lest, weak and spent as he was, the winds would force 
him back a long way off into the main, where the terri- 
ble god Neptune, for wrath that he had so nearly escaped 
his power, having gotten him again into his domain, 
would send out some great whale (of which those seas 
breed a horrid number) to swallow him up alive ; with 
such malignity he still pursued him. 

While these thoughts distracted him with diversity of 
dangers, one bigger wave drove against a sharp rock 
his naked body, which it gashed and tore, and wanted 
little of breaking all his bones, so rude was the shock. 
But, in this extremity, she prompted him that never failed 
him at need. Minerva (who is Wisdom itself) put it 
into his thoughts no longer to keep swimming off and 
on, as one dallying with danger, but boldly to force the 
shore that threatened him, and to hug the rock that had 
torn him so rudely ; which with both hands he clasped, 
wrestling with extremity, till the rage of that billow 
which had driven him upon it was passed : but then 
again the rock drove back that wave so furiously, that 
it reft him of his hold, sucking him with it in its return ; 



276 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

and the sharp rock, his cruel friend, to which he dinged 
for succor, rent the flesh so sore from his hands in 
parting, that he fell off, and could sustain no longer. 
Quite under water he fell ; and, past the help of fate, 
there had the hapless Ulysses lost all portion that he 
had in this life, if Minerva had not prompted his 
wisdom in that peril to essay another course, and to 
explore some other shelter, ceasing to attempt that 
landing-place. 

She guided his wearied and nigh-exhausted limbs to 
the mouth of the fair river Callicoe, which, not far from 
thence, disbursed its watery tribute to the ocean. Here 
the shores were easy and accessible, and the rocks 
(which rather adorned than defended its banks) so 
smooth, that they seemed polished of purpose to in- 
vite the landing of our sea-wanderer, and to atone for 
the uncourteous treatment which those less hospitable 
cliffs had afforded him. And the god of the river, as if 
in pity, stayed his current, and smoothed his waters, to 
make his landing more easy : for sacred to the ever-liv- 
ing deities of the fresh waters, be they mountain-stream, 
river, or lake, is the cry of erring mortals that seek their 
aid ; by reason, that, being inland-bred, they partake 
more of the gentle humanities of our nature than those 
marine deities whom Neptune trains up in tempests in 
the unpitying recesses of his salt abyss. 

So, by the favor of the river's god, Ulysses crept to 
land, half-drowned. Both his knees faltering, his strong 
hands falling down through weakness from the exces- 
sive toils he had endured, his cheeks and nostrils flowing 
with froth of the sea-brine, much of which he had swal- 
lowed in that conflict, voice and breath spent, down he 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 277 

sank as in death, Dead weary he was. It seemed 
that the sea had soaked through his heart, and the pains 
he felt in all his veins were little less than those which 
one feels that has endured the torture of the rack. But 
when his spirits came a little to themselves, and his 
recollection by degrees began to return, he rose up, 
and unloosing from his waist the girdle or charm which 
that divine bird had given him, and remembering the 
charge which he had received with it, he flung it far 
from him into the river. Back it swam with the course 
of the ebbing stream till it reached the sea, where the 
fair hands of Ino Leucothea received it, to keep it as a 
pledge of safety to any future shipwrecked mariner, that, 
like Ulysses, should wander in those perilous waves. 

Then he kissed the humble earth in token of safety ; 
and on he went by the side of that pleasant river, till 
he came where a thicker shade of rushes that grew on 
its banks seemed to point out the place where he might 
rest his sea-wearied limbs. And here a fresh perplexity 
divided his mind, — whether he should pass the night, 
which was coming on, in that place, where, though he 
feared no other enemies, the damps and frosts of the 
chill sea-air in that exposed situation might be death to 
him in his weak state ; or whether he had better climb 
the next hill, and pierce the depth of some shady wood, 
in which he might find a warm and sheltered though 
insecure repose, subject to the approach of any wild 
beast that roamed that way. Best did this last course 
appear to him, though with some danger, as that which 
was more honorable, and savored more of strife and self- 
exertion, than to perish without a struggle, the passive 
victim of cold and the elements. 



278 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

So he bent his course to the nearest woods ; where, 
entering in, he found a thicket, mostly of wild olives 
and such low trees, yet growing so intertwined and knit 
together, that the moist wind had not leave to play 
through their branches, nor the sun's scorching beams to 
pierce their recesses, nor any shower to beat through, 
they grew so thick, and, as it were, folded each in the 
other. Here, creeping in, he made his bed of the leaves 
which were beginning to fall, of which was such abun- 
dance, that two or three men might have spread them 
ample coverings, such as might shield them from the 
winter's rage, though the air breathed steel, and blew 
as it would burst. Here, creeping in, he heaped up 
store of leaves all about him, as a man would billets 
upon a winter fire, and lay down in the midst. Rich 
seed of virtue lying hid in poor leaves ! Here Minerva 
soon gave him sound sleep ; and here all his long toils 
past seemed to be concluded, and shut up within the 
little sphere of his refreshed and closed eyelids. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE PRINCESS NAUSICAA. — THE WASHING. — THE GAME WITH THE BALL. — 
THE COURT OE PH^EACIA AND KXNG ALCINOUS. 

Meantime Minerva, designing an interview between 
the king's daughter of that country and Ulysses when 
he should awake, went by night to the palace of King 
Alcinous, and stood at the bedside of the Princess Nau- 
sicaa in the shape of one of her favorite attendants, and 
thus addressed the sleeping princess : — 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 279 

"Nausicaa, why do you lie sleeping here, and never 
bestow a thought upon your bridal ornaments ? of which 
you have many and beautiful, laid up in your wardrobe 
against the day of your marriage, which cannot be far 
distant ; when you shall have need of all, not only to 
deck your own person, but to give away in presents 
to the virgins, that, honoring you, shall attend you to the 
temple. Your reputation stands much upon the timely 
care of these things : these things are they which fill 
father and reverend mother with delight. Let us arise 
betimes to wash your fair vestments of linen and silks 
in the river : and request your sire to lend you mules 
and a coach ; for your wardrobe is heavy, and the place 
where we must wash is distant ; and, besides, it fits not 
a great princess like you to go so far on foot." 

So saying, she went away, and Nausicaa awoke full 
of pleasing thoughts of her marriage, which the dream 
had told her was not far distant ; and, as soon as it was 
dawn, she arose and dressed herself, and went to find 
her parent. 

The queen, her mother, was already up, and seated 
among her maids, spinning at her wheel, as the fashion 
was in those primitive times, when great ladies did not 
disdain housewifery ; and the king, her father, was pre- 
paring to go abroad at that early hour to council with 
his grave senate. 

" My father," she said, "will you not order mules and 
a coach to be got ready, that I may go and wash, I and 
my maids, at the cisterns that stand without the city?" 

" What washing does my daughter speak of? " said 
Alcinous. 

" Mine and my brothers' garments," she replied, w that 



280 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

have contracted soil by this time with lying by so long 
in the wardrobe. Five sons have you, that are my 
brothers : two of them are married, and three are bach- 
elors. These last it concerns to have their garments neat 
and unsoiled : it may advance their fortunes in mar- 
riage. And who but I, their sister, should have a care 
of these things? You yourself, my father, have need 
of the whitest apparel, when you go, as now, to the 
council." 

She used this plea, modestly dissembling her care of 
her own nuptials to her father ; who was not displeased 
at this instance of his daughter's discretion : for a sea- 
sonable care about marriage may be permitted to a 
young maiden, provided it be accompanied with modesty, 
and dutiful submission to her parents in the choice of 
her future husband. And there was no fear of Nausicaa 
choosing wrongly or improperly ; for she was as wise as 
she was beautiful, and the best in all Phaeacia were 
suitors to her for her love. So Alcinous readily gave 
consent that she should go, ordering mules and a coach 
to be prepared. And Nausicaa brought from her cham- 
ber all her vestments, and laid them up in the coach ; 
and her mother placed bread and wine in the coach, and 
oil in a golden cruse, to soften the bright skins of 
Nausicaa and her maids when they came out of the river. 

Nausicaa, making her maids get up into the coach 
with her, lashed the mules, till they brought her to the 
cisterns which stood a little on the outside of the town, 
and were supplied with water from the river Callicoe. 

There her attendants unyoked the mules, took out 
the clothes, and steeped them in the cisterns, washing 
them in several waters, and afterwards treading them 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 281 

clean with their feet ; venturing wagers who should have 
done soonest and cleanest, and using many pretty pas- 
times to beguile their labors as young maids use, while 
the princess looked on. When they had laid their 
clothes to dry, they fell to playing again ; and Nausicaa 
joined them in a game with the ball, which is used in 
that country ; which is performed by tossing the ball 
from hand to hand with great expedition, she who begins 
the pastime singing a song. It chanced that the prin- 
cess, whose turn it became to toss the ball, sent it so far 
from its mark, that it fell beyond into one of the cisterns 
of the river ; at which the whole company, in merry con- 
sternation, set up a shriek so loud as waked the sleeping 
Ulysses, who was taking his rest, after his long toils, in 
the woods, not far distant from the place where these 
young maids had come to wash. 

At the sound of female voices, Ulysses crept forth 
from his retirement ; making himself a covering with 
boughs and leaves as well as he could to shroud his 
nakedness. The sudden appearance of his weather- 
beaten and almost naked form so frighted the maidens, 
that they scudded away into the woods and all about to 
hide themselves : only Minerva (who had brought about 
this interview, to admirable purposes, by seemingly acci- 
dental means) put courage into the breast of Nausicaa, 
and she staid where she was, and resolved to know 
what manner of man he was, and what was the occasion 
of his strange coming to them. 

He, not venturing (for delicacy) to approach and 
clasp her knees, as suppliants should, but standing far 
off, addressed this speech to the young princess : — 

"Before I presume rudely to press my petitions, I 



282 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

should first ask whether I am addressing a mortal wo- 
man, or one of the goddesses. If a goddess, you seem 
to me to be likest to Diana, the chaste huntress, the 
daughter of Jove. Like hers are your lineaments, your 
stature, your features, and air divine." 

She making answer that she was no goddess, but a 
mortal maid, he continued : — 

"If a woman, thrice blessed are both the authors of 
your birth ; thrice blessed are your brothers, who even 
to rapture must have joy in your perfections, to see you 
grown so like a young tree, and so graceful. But most 
blessed of all that breathe is he that has the gift to en- 
gage your young neck in the yoke of marriage. I never 
saw that man that was worthy of you. I never saw 
man or woman that at all parts equalled you. Lately 
at Delos (where I touched) I saw a young palm which 
grew beside Apollo's temple ; it exceeded all the trees 
which ever I beheld for straightness and beauty : I can 
compare you only to that. A stupor past admiration 
strikes me, joined with fear, which keeps me back from 
approaching you to embrace your knees. Nor is it 
strange ; for one of freshest and firmest spirit would 
falter, approaching near to so bright an object : but I am 
one whom a cruel habit of calamity has prepared to re- 
ceive strong impressions. Twenty days the unrelenting 
seas have tossed me up and down, coming from Ogvgia ; 
and at length cast me shipwrecked last night upon your 
coast. I have seen no man or woman since I landed 
but yourself. All that I crave is clothes, which you 
may spare me ; and to be shown the way to some neigh- 
boring town. The gods, who have care of strangers, 
will requite you for these courtesies." 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 283 

She, admiring to bear such complimentary words pro- 
ceed out of the mouth of one whose outside looked so 
rough and unpromising, made answer : " Stranger, I 
discern neither sloth nor folly in you ; and yet I see that 
you are poor and wretched : from which I gather that 
neither wisdom nor industry can secure felicity ; only 
Jove bestows it upon whomsoever he pleases. He, per- 
haps, has reduced you to this plight. However, since 
your wanderings have brought you so near to our city, 
it lies in our duty to supply your wants. Clothes, and 
what else a human hand should give to one so suppliant, 
and so tamed with calamity, you shall not want. We 
will show you our city, and tell you the name of our 
people. This is the land of the Phaeacians, of which my 
father, Alcinous, is king." 

Then calling her attendants, who had dispersed on the 
first sight of Ulysses, she rebuked them for their fear, 
and said, "This man is no Cyclop, nor monster of sea 
or land, that you should fear him ; but he seems manly, 
staid, and discreet, and though decayed in his outward 
appearance, yet he has the mind's riches, wit and forti- 
tude, in abundance. Show him the cisterns where he 
may wash him from the seaweeds and foam that hang 
about him, and let him have garments that fit him 
out of those which we have brought with us to the cis- 
terns." 

Ulysses, retiring a little out of sight, cleansed him in 
the cisterns from the soil and impurities with which the 
rocks and waves had covered all his body ; and, cloth- 
ing himself with befitting raiment which the princess's 
attendants had given him, he presented himself in more 
worthy shape to Nausicaa. She admired to see what 



284 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

a comely personage he was, now he was dressed in all 
parts : she thought him some king or hero, and secretly- 
wished that the gods would be pleased to give her such 
a husband. 

Then causing her attendants to yoke her mules, and 
lay up the vestments, which the sun's heat had suffi- 
ciently dried, in the coach, she ascended with her maids, 
and drove off to the palace : bidding Ulysses, as she 
departed, keep an eye upon the coach, and to follow it 
on foot at some distance ; which she did, because, if she 
had suffered him to have ridden in the coach with her, 
it might have subjected her to some misconstructions of 
the common people, who are always ready to vilify and 
censure their betters, and to suspect that charity is not 
always pure charity, but that love or some sinister 
intention lies hid under its disguise. So discreet and 
attentive to appearance in all her actions was this ad- 
mirable princess. 

Ulysses, as he entered the city, wondered to see its 
magnificence ; its markets, buildings, temples ; its walls 
and rampires ; its trade, and resort of men ; its harbors 
for shipping, which is the strength of the Phseacian 
state. But when he approached the palace, and beheld 
its riches, the proportion of its architecture, its avenues, 
gardens, statues, fountains, he stood rapt in admiration, 
and almost forgot his own condition in surveying the 
flourishing estate of others : but, recollecting himself, 
he passed on boldly into the inner apartment, where the 
king and queen were sitting at dinner with their peers ; 
Nausicaa having prepared them for his approach. 

To them humbly kneeling, he made it his request, 
that, since fortune had cast him naked upon their shores, 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 285 

they would take him into their protection, and grant 
him a conveyance by one of the ships, of which their 
great Phaeacian state had such good store, to carry him 
to his own country. Having delivered his request, to 
grace it with more humility, he went and sat himself 
down upon the hearth among the ashes, as the custom 
was in those days when any would make a petition to 
the throne. 

He seemed a petitioner of so great state, and of so 
superior a deportment, that Alcinous himself arose to 
do him honor, and, causing him to leave that abject 
station which he had assumed, placed him next to his 
throne upon a chair of state ; and thus he spake to his 
peers : — 

" Lords and councillors of Phaeacia, ye see this man, 
who he is we know not, that is come to us in the guise 
of a petitioner. He seems no mean one : but, whoever 
he is, it is fit, since the gods have cast him upon our 
protection, that we grant him the rights of hospitality 
while he stays with us ; and, at his departure, a ship 
well manned, to convey so worthy a personage as he 
seems to be, in a manner suitable to his rank, to his 
own country." 

This counsel the peers with one consent approved ; 
and, wine and meat being set before Ulysses, he ate and 
drank, and gave the gods thanks who had stirred up 
the royal bounty of Alcinous to aid him in that extrem- 
ity. But not as yet did he reveal to the king and 
queen who he was, or whence he had come : only in 
brief terms he related his being cast upon their shores, 
his sleep in the woods, and his meeting with the Prin- 
cess Nausicaa ; whose generosity, mingled with discre- 



286 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

tion, filled her parents with delight, as Ulysses in 
eloquent phrases adorned and commended her virtues. 
But Alcinous, humanely considering that the troubles 
which his guest had undergone required rest, as well as 
refreshment by food, dismissed him early in the even- 
ing to his chamber ; where, in a magnificent apart- 
ment, Ulysses found a smoother bed, but not a sounder 
repose, than he had enjoyed the night before, sleeping 
upon leaves which he had scraped together in his neces- 
sity. 



CHAP TEE VIL 

THE SONGS OE DEMODOCUS. —THE CONVOY HOME. — THE MARINERS TRANS- 
FORMED TO STONE. — THE YOUNG SHEPHERD. 

When it was daylight, Alcinous caused it to be pro- 
claimed by the heralds about the town, that there was 
come to the palace a stranger, shipwrecked on their 
coast, that in mien and person resembled a god ; and 
inviting all the chief people of the city to come and do 
honor to the stranger. 

The palace was quickly filled with guests, old and 
young ; for whose cheer, and to grace Ulysses more, 
Alcinous made a kingly feast, with banquetings and 
music. Then Ulysses being seated at a table next the 
king and queen, in all men's view, after they had feast- 
ed, Alcinous ordered Demodocus, the court-singer, to 
be called to sing some sono; of the deeds of heroes, 
to charm the ear of his guest. Demodocus came, and 
reached his harp, where it hung between two pillars of 
silver; and then the blind singer, to whom, in recom- 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 287 

pense of his lost sight, the Muses had given an inward 
discernment, a soul and a voice to excite the hearts of 
men and gods to delight, began in grave and solemn 
strains to sing the glories of men highliest famed. He 
chose a poem, whose subject was, The stern Strife 
stirred up between Ulysses and great Achilles, as, at a 
banquet sacred to the gods, in dreadful language they 
expressed their difference ; while Agamemnon sat re- 
joiced in soul to hear those Grecians jar : for the oracle 
in Pytho had told him, that the period of their wars in 
Troy should then be, when the kings of Greece, anxious 
to arrive at the wished conclusion, should fall to strife, 
and contend which must end the war, force or stratagem. 
This brave contention he expressed so to the life, in 
the very words which they both used in the quarrel, as 
brought tears into the eyes of Ulysses at the remem- 
brance of past passages of his life ; and he held his large 
purple weed before his face to conceal it. Then, craving 
a cup of wine, he poured it out in secret libation to 
the gods, who had put into the mind of Demodocus 
unknowingly to do him so much honor. But, when the 
moving poet began to tell of other occurrences where 
Ulysses had been present, the memory of his brave 
followers who had been with him in all difficulties, now 
swallowed up and lost in the ocean, and of those kings 
that had fought with him at Troy, some of whom were 
dead, some exiles like himself, forced itself so strongly 
upon his mind, that, forgetful where he was, he sobbed 
outright with passion ; which yet he restrained, but not 
so cunningly but Alcinous perceived it, and, without 
taking notice of it to Ulysses, privately gave signs that 
Demodocus should cease from his singing. 



288 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

Next followed dancing in the Phseacian fashion, when 
they would show respect to their guests ; which was 
succeeded by trials of skill, games of strength, running, 
racing, hurling of the quoit, mock fights, hurling of 
the javelin, shooting with the bow ; in some of which, 
Ulysses, modestly challenging his entertainers, performed 
such feats of strength and prowess, as gave the admiring 
Phaeacians fresh reason to imagine that he was either 
some god, or hero of the race of the gods. 

These solemn shows and pageants in honor of his 
guest, King Alcinous continued for the space of many 
days, as if he could never be weary of showing courte- 
sies to so worthy a stranger. In all this time he never 
asked him his name, nor sought to know more of him 
than he of his own accord disclosed ; till on a day as 
they were seated feasting, after the feast was ended, 
Demodocus, being called, as was the custom, to sing 
some grave matter, sang how Ulysses, on that night 
when Troy was fired, made dreadful proof of his valor, 
maintaining singly a combat against the whole house- 
hold of Deiphobus ; to which the divine expresser gave 
both act and passion, and breathed such a fire into 
Ulysses' deeds, that it inspired old death with life in 
the lively expressing of slaughters, and rendered life so 
sweet and passionate in the hearers, that all who heard 
felt it fleet from them in the narration : which made 
Ulysses even pity his own slaughterous deeds, and feel 
touches of remorse, to see how song can revive a dead 
man from the grave, yet no way can it defend a living 
man from death ; and in imagination he underwent 
some part of death's horrors, and felt in his living body 
a taste of those dying pangs which he had dealt to 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 289 

others, that, with the strong conceit, tears (the true 
interpreters of unutterable emotion) stood in his eyes. 

Which King Alcinous noting, and that this was now 
the second time that he had perceived him to be moved 
at the mention of events touching the Trojan wars, he 
took occasion to ask whether his guest had lost any 
friend or kinsman at Troy, that Demodocus' singing 
had brought into his mind. Then Ulysses, drying the 
tears with his cloak, and observing that the eyes of all 
the company were upon him, desirous to give them 
satisfaction in what he could, and thinking this a fit 
time to reveal his true name and destination, spake as 
follows : — 

"The courtesies which ye all have shown me, and 
in particular yourself and princely daughter, O King 
Alcinous ! demand from me that I should no longer 
keep you in ignorance of what or who I am ; for to 
reserve any secret from you, who have with such open- 
ness of friendship embraced my love, would argue 
either a pusillanimous or an ungrateful mind in me. 
Know, then, that I am that Ulysses, of whom I perceive 
ye have heard something ; who heretofore have filled the 
world with the renown of my policies. I am he, by 
whose counsels, if Fame is to be believed at all, more 
than by the united valor of all the Grecians, Troy fell. 
I am that unhappy man whom the heavens and angry 
gods have conspired to keep an exile on the seas, wan- 
dering to seek my home, which still flies from me. The 
land which I am in quest of is Ithaca ; in whose ports 
some ship belonging to your navigation-famed Phasacian 
state may haply at some time have found a refuge from 
tempests. If ever you have experienced such kindness, 

19 



290 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

requite it now, by granting to me, who am the king 
of that land, a passport to that land." 

Admiration seized all the court of Alcinous to behold 
in their presence one of the number of those heroes who 
fought at Troy ; whose divine story had been made 
known to them by songs and poems, but of the truth 
they had little known, or rather they had hitherto ac- 
counted those heroic exploits as fictions and exaggera- 
tions of poets : but, having seen and made proof of the 
real Ulysses, they began to take those supposed inven- 
tions to be real verities, and the tale of Troy to be as 
true as it was delightful. 

Then King Alcinous made answer : " Thrice fortunate 
ought we to esteem our lot in having seen and con- 
versed with a man of whom report hath spoken so loudly, 
but, as it seems, nothing beyond the truth. Though 
we could desire no felicity greater than to have you 
always among us, renowned Ulysses, yet, your desire 
having been expressed so often and so deeply to return 
home, we can deny you nothing, though to our own 
loss. Our kingdom of Phasacia, as you know, is chiefly 
rich in shipping. In all parts of the world, where there 
are navigable seas, or ships can pass, our vessels will 
be found. You cannot name a coast to which they do 
not resort. Every rock and every quicksand is known 
to them, that lurks in the vast deep. They pass a bird 
in flight ; and with such unerring certainty they make 
to their destination, that some have said that they have 
no need of pilot or rudder, but that they move in- 
stinctively, self-directed, and know the minds of their 
voyagers. Thus much, that you may not fear to trust 
yourself in one of our Phaaacian ships. To-morrow, if 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 291 

you please, you shall launch forth. To-day spend with 
us in feasting, who never can do enough when the gods 
send such visitors." 

Ulysses acknowledged King Alcinous' bounty ; and, 
while these two royal personages stood interchanging 
courteous expressions, the heart of the Princess Nausicaa 
was overcome. She had been gazing attentively upon 
her father's guest, as he delivered his speech : but, when 
he came to that part where he declared himself to be 
Ulysses, she blessed herself, and her fortune, that in 
relieving a poor shipwrecked mariner, as he seemed no 
better, she had conferred a kindness on so divine a hero 
as he proved ; and, scarce waiting till her father had 
done speaking, with a cheerful countenance she addressed 
Ulysses, bidding him be cheerful, and when he returned 
home, as by her father's means she trusted he would 
shortly, sometimes to remember to whom he owed his 
life, and who met him in the woods by the river Cal- 
licoe. 

"Fair flower of Phaeacia," he replied, "so may all 
the gods bless me with the strife of joys in that desired 
day, whenever I shall see it, as I shall always acknowl- 
edge to be indebted to your fair hand for the gift of life 
which I enjoy, and all the blessings which shall follow 
upon my home-return. The gods give thee, Nausicaa, 
a princely husband ; and from you two spring blessings 
to this state." So prayed Ulysses, his heart overflow- 
ing with admiration and grateful recollections of King 
Alcinous' daughter. 

Then, at the king's request, he gave them a brief 
relation of all the adventures that had befallen him 
since he launched forth from Troy : during which the 



292 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

Princess Nausicaa took great delight (as ladies are com- 
monly taken with these kind of travellers' stories) to 
hear of the monster Polyphemus, of the men that devour 
each other in Lsestrygonia, of the enchantress Circe, 
of Scylla, and the rest ; to which she listened with a 
breathless attention, letting fall a shower of tears from 
her fair eyes, every now and then, when Ulysses told of 
some more than usual distressful passage in his travels : 
and all the rest of his auditors, if they had before enter- 
tained a high respect for their guest, now felt their 
veneration increased tenfold, when they learned from 
his own mouth what perils, what sufferance, what en- 
durance, of evils beyond man's strength to support, 
this much-sustaining, almost heavenly man, by the great- 
ness of his mind and by his invincible courage, had 
struggled through. 

The night was far spent before Ulysses had ended 
his narrative : and with wishful glances he cast his eyes 
towards the eastern parts, which the sun had begun to 
flecker with his first red ; for, on the morrow, Alcinous 
had promised that a bark should be in readiness to 
convoy him to Ithaca. 

In the morning, a vessel well manned and appointed 
was waiting for him ; into which the king and queen 
heaped presents of gold and silver, massy plate, apparel, 
armor, and whatsoever things of cost or rarity they 
judged would be most acceptable to their guest : and, 
the sails being set, Ulysses, embarking with expressions 
of regret, took his leave of his royal entertainers, of the 
fair princess (who had been his first friend), and of 
the peers of Pheeacia ; who, crowding down to the beach 
to have the last sight of their illustrious visitant, beheld 






THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 293 

the gallant ship with all her canvas spread, bounding 
and curvetting over the waves like a horse proud of 
his rider, or as if she knew that in her capacious womb's 
rich freightage she bore Ulysses. 

He whose life past had been a series of disquiets, in 
seas among rude waves, in battles amongst ruder foes, 
now slept securely, forgetting all ; his eyelids bound in 
such deep sleep as only yielded to death : and, when 
they reached the nearest Ithacan port by the next morn- 
ing, he was still asleep. The mariners, not willing to 
awake him, landed him softly, and laid him in a cave at 
the foot of an olive-tree, which made a shady recess in 
that narrow harbor, the haunt of almost none but the 
sea-nymphs, which are called Naiads ; few ships before 
this Phseacian vessel having put into that haven, by 
reason of the difficulty and narrowness of the entrance. 
Here leaving him asleep, and disposing in safe places 
near him the presents with which King Alcinous had 
dismissed him, they departed for Phseacia, where these 
wretched mariners never again set foot : but just as 
they arrived, and thought to salute their country earth, — 
in sight of their city's turrets, and in open view of their 
friends, who from the harbor with shouts greeted their 
return, — their vessel and all the mariners which were in 
her were turned to stone, and stood transformed and 
fixed in sight of the whole Phasacian city ; where it yet 
stands, by Neptune's vindictive wrath, who resented 
thus highly the contempt which those Ph&acians had 
shown in convoying home a man whom the god had 
destined to destruction. Whence it comes to pass, that 
the Phasacians at this day will at no price be induced 
to lend their ships to strangers, or to become the car- 



294 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

riers for other nations, so highly do they still dread the 
displeasure of their sea-god, while they see that terrible 
monument ever in sight. 

When Ulysses awoke (which was not till some time 
after the mariners had departed), he did not at first 
know his country again ; either that long absence had 
made it strange, or that Minerva (which was more 
likely) had cast a cloud about his eyes, that he should 
have greater pleasure hereafter in discovering his mis- 
take : but like a man suddenly awaking in some desert 
isle, to which his sea-mates have transported him in his 
sleep, he looked around, and, discerning no known ob- 
jects, he cast his hands to heaven for pity, and com- 
plained on those ruthless men who had beguiled him 
with a promise of conveying him home to his country, 
and perfidiously left him to perish in an unknown land. 
But then the rich presents of gold and silver given him 
by Alcinous, which he saw carefully laid up in secure 
places near him, staggered him ; which seemed not like 
the act of wrongful or unjust men, such as turn pirates 
for gain, or land helpless passengers in remote coasts to 
possess themselves of their goods. 

While he remained in this suspense, there came up to 
him a young shepherd, clad in the finer sort of apparel, 
such as kings' sons wore in those days when princes 
did not disdain to tend sheep ; who, accosting him, was 
saluted again by Ulysses, who asked him what country 
that was on which he had been just landed, and 
whether it were part of a continent or an island. The 
young shepherd made show of wonder to hear any one 
ask the name of that land ; as country people are apt 
to esteem those for mainly ignorant and barbarous who 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 295 

do not know the names of places which are familiar to 
them, though perhaps they who ask have had no op- 
portunities of knowing, and may have come from far 
countries. 

" I had thought," said he, " that all people knew our 
land. It is rocky and barren, to be sure ; but well 
enough : it feeds a goat or an ox well ; it is not want- 
ing either in wine or in wheat ; it has good springs of 
water, some fair rivers, and wood enough, as you may 
see. It is called Ithaca." 

Ulysses was joyed enough to find himself in his own 
country : but so prudently he carried his joy, that, dis- 
sembling his true name and quality, he pretended to the 
shepherd that he was only some foreigner who by stress 
of weather had put into that port ; and framed on the 
sudden a story to make it plausible how he had come 
from Crete in a ship of Phaeacia : when the young 
shepherd, laughing, and taking Ulysses' hand in both 
his, said to him, " He must be cunning, I find, who 
thinks to overreach you. What ! cannot you quit your 
wiles and your subtleties, now that you are in a state 
of security ? must the first word with which you salute 
your native earth be an untruth? and think you that 
you are unknown ? " 

Ulysses looked again ; and he saw, not a shepherd, 
but a beautiful woman, whom he immediately knew to 
be the goddess Minerva, that in the wars of Troy had 
frequently vouchsafed her sight to him ; and had been 
with him since in perils, saving him unseen. 

" Let not my ignorance offend thee, great Minerva," 
he cried, " or move thy displeasure, that in that shape 
I knew thee not ; since the skill of discerning of deities 



296 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

is not attainable by wit or study, but hard to be hit by 
the wisest of mortals. To know thee truly, through all 
thy changes, is only given to those whom thou art 
pleased to grace. To all men thou takest all like- 
nesses. All men in their wits think that they know 
thee, and that they have thee. Thou art Wisdom itself. 
But a semblance of thee, which is false wisdom, often 
is taken for thee ; so thy counterfeit view appears to 
many, but thy true presence to few : those are they, 
which, loving thee above all, are inspired with light 
from thee to know thee. But this I surely know, that, 
all the time the sons of Greece waged war against Troy, 
I was sundry times graced with thy appearance; but, 
since, I have never been able to set eyes upon thee 
till now, but have wandered at my own discretion, to 
myself a blind guide, erring up and down the world, 
wanting thee." 

Then Minerva cleared his eyes, and he knew the 
ground on which he stood to be Ithaca, and that cave 
to be the same which the people of Ithaca had in former 
times made sacred to the sea-nymphs, and where he 
himself had done sacrifices to them a thousand times ; 
and full in his view stood Mount Nerytus, with all his 
woods : so that now he knew for a certainty that he was 
arrived in his own country ; and, with the delight which 
he felt, he could not forbear stooping down, and kissing 
the soil. 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 297 



CHAP TEE VIII. 

THE CHANGE FROM A KING TO A BEGGAK. — EUM^EUS AND THE HEEDSMEN 
TELEMACHUS. 

Not long did Minerva suffer him to indulge vain 
transports ; but, briefly recounting to him the events 
which had taken place in Ithaca during his absence, she 
showed him that his way to his wife and throne did not 
lie so open, but that, before he were re-instated in the 
secure possession of them, he must encounter many 
difficulties. His palace, wanting its king, was become 
the resort of insolent and imperious men, the chief 
nobility of Ithaca and of the neighboring isles, who, in 
the confidence of Ulysses being dead, came as suitors to 
Penelope. The queen (it was true) continued single, 
but was little better than a state-prisoner in the power 
of these men, who, under a pretence of waiting her de- 
cision, occupied the king's house, rather as owners than 
guests, lording and domineering at their pleasure, pro- 
faning the palace, and wasting the royal substance, 
with their feasts and mad riots. Moreover, the goddess 
told him, how, fearing the attempts of these lawless men 
upon the person of his young son Telemachus, she her- 
self had put it into the heart of the prince to go and 
seek his father in far countries ; how, in the shape of 
Mentor, she had borne him company in his long search ; 
which though failing, as she meant it should fail, in its 
first object, had yet had this effect, — that through hard- 
ships he had learned endurance ; through experience he 



298 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

had gathered wisdom ; and, wherever his footsteps had 
been, he had left such memorials of his worth, as the fame 
of Ulysses' son was already blown throughout the world. 
That it was now not many days since Telemachus had 
arrived in the island, to the great joy of the queen, his 
mother, who had thought him dead, by reason of his long- 
absence, and had begun to mourn for him with a grief 
equal to that which she endured for Ulysses ; the god- 
dess herself having so ordered the course of his adven- 
tures, that the time of his return should correspond 
with the return of Ulysses, that they might together 
concert measures how to repress the power and inso- 
lence of those wicked suitors. This the goddess told 
him ; but of the particulars of his son's adventures, of 
his having been detained in the Delightful Island, which 
his father had so lately left, of Calypso and her nymphs, 
and the many strange occurrences which may be read 
with profit and delight in the history of the prince's 
adventures, she forbore to tell him as yet, as judging 
that he would hear them with greater pleasure from the 
lips of his son, when he should have him in an hour of 
stillness and safety, when their work should be done, 
and none of their enemies left alive to trouble them. 

Then they sat down, the goddess and Ulysses, at the 
foot of a wild olive-tree, consulting how they might 
with safety bring about his restoration. And when 
Ulysses revolved in his mind how that his enemies were 
a multitude, and he single, he began to despond ; and 
he said, "I shall die an ill death, like Agamemnon : in 
the threshold of my own house I shall perish, like that 
unfortunate monarch, slain by some one of my wife's 
suitors." But then, again, calling to mind his ancient 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 299 

courage, he secretly wished that Minerva would but 
breathe such a spirit into his bosom as she inflamed 
him with in the hour of Troy's destruction, that he 
might encounter with three hundred of those impudent 
suitors at once, and strew the pavements of his beautiful 
palace with their bloods and brains. 

And Minerva knew his thoughts ; and she said, " I 
will be strongly with thee, if thou fail not to do thy 
part. And for a sign between us that I will perform 
my promise, and for a token on thy part of obedience, 
I must change thee, that thy person may not be known 
of men." 

Then Ulysses bowed his head to receive the divine 
impression ; and Minerva, by her great power, changed 
his person so that it might not be known. She changed 
him to appearance into a very old man, yet such a one 
as by his limbs and gait seemed to have been some 
considerable person in his time, and to retain yet some 
remains of his once prodigious strength. Also, instead 
of those rich robes in which King Alcinous had clothed 
him, she threw over his limbs such old and tattered rags 
as wandering beggars usually wear. A staff supported 
his steps, and a scrip hung to his back, such as travel- 
ling mendicants use to hold the scraps which are given 
to them at rich men's doors. So from a king he became 
a beggar, as wise Tiresias had predicted to him in the 
shades. 

To complete his humiliation, and to prove his obedi- 
ence by suffering, she next directed him in this beggarly 
attire to go and present himself to his old herdsman, 
Eumseus, who had the care of his swine and his cattle, 
and had been a faithful steward to him all the time of 



300 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

Ills absence. Then, strictly charging Ulysses that he 
should reveal himself to no man but to his own son, 
whom she would send to him when she saw occasion, 
the goddess went her way. 

The transformed Ulysses bent his course to the cot- 
tage of the herdsman; and, entering in at the front court, 
the dogs, of which Eumasus kept many fierce ones for 
the protection of the cattle, flew with open mouths upon 
him, as those ignoble animals have oftentimes an an- 
tipathy to the sight of any thing like a beggar ; and 
would have rent him in pieces with their teeth, if Ulys- 
ses had not had the prudence to let fall his staff, which 
had chiefly provoked their fury, and sat himself down 
in a careless fashion upon the ground. But, for all that, 
some serious hurt had certainly been done to him, so 
raging the dogs were, had not the herdsman, whom the 
barking of the dogs had fetched out of the house, with 
shouting and with throwing of stones repressed them. 

He said, when he saw Ulysses, "Old father, how 
near you were to being torn in pieces by these rude 
dogs ! I should never have forgiven myself, if, through 
neglect of mine, any hurt had happened to you. But 
Heaven has given me so many cares to my portion, that 
I might well be excused for not attending to every 
thing ; while here I lie grieving and mourning for the 
absence of that majesty which once ruled here, and am 
forced to fatten his swine and his cattle for food to evil 
men, who hate him, and who wish his death ; when he 
perhaps strays up and down the world, and has not 
wherewith to appease hunger, if indeed he yet lives 
(which is a question), and enjoys the cheerful light of 
the sun." This he said, little thinking that he of whom 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 301 

he spoke now stood before him, and that in that un- 
couth disguise and beggarly obscurity was present the 
hidden majesty of Ulysses. 

Then he had his guest into the house, and set meat 
and drink before him ; and Ulysses said, " May Jove and 
all the other gods requite you for the kind speeches and 
hospitable usage which you have shown me ! " 

Eumseus made answer, "My poor guest, if one in 
much worse plight than yourself had arrived here, it 
were a shame to such scanty means as I have, if I had 
let him depart without entertaining him to the best of 
my ability. Poor men, and such as have no houses 
of their own, are by Jove himself recommended to our 
care. But the cheer which we that are servants to 
other men have to bestow is but sorry at most ; yet 
freely and lovingly I give it you. Indeed, there once 
ruled here a man, whose return the gods have set their 
faces against, who, if he had been suffered to reign in 
peace and grow old among us, would have been kind to 
me and mine. But he is gone ; and, for his sake, would 
to God that the whole posterity of Helen might perish 
with her, since in her quarrel so many worthies have 
perished ! But such as your fare is, eat it, and be wel- 
come ; such lean beasts as are food for poor herdsmen. 
The fattest go to feed the voracious stomachs of the 
queen's suitors. Shame on their unworthiness ! There 
is no day in which two or three of the noblest of the 
herd are not slain to support their feasts and their sur- 
feits." 

Ulysses gave good ear to his words ; and, as he ate 
his meat, he even tore it and rent it with his teeth, for 
mere vexation that his fat cattle should be slain to glut 



302 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

the appetites of those godless suitors. And he said, 
" What chief or what ruler is this that thou commendest 
so highly, and say est that he perished at Troy? I am 
but a stranger in these parts. It may be I have heard 
of some such in my long travels." 

Eumaeus answered, " Old father, never any one, of 
all the strangers that have come to our coast with news 
of Ulysses being alive, could gain credit with the queen 
or her son yet. These travellers, to get raiment or a 
meal, will not stick to invent any lie. Truth is not the 
commodity they deal in. Never did the queen get any 
thing of them but lies. She receives all that come, 
graciously ; hears their stories, inquires all she can ; but 
all ends in tears and dissatisfaction. But in God's 
name, old father, if you have got a tale, make the most 
on't ; it may gain you a cloak or a coat from somebody 
to keep you warm : but, for him who is the subject of 
it, dogs and vultures long since have torn him limb 
from limb, or some great fish at sea has devoured him, 
or he lieth with no better monument upon his bones 
than the sea-sand. But for me past all the race of men 
were tears created ; for I never shall find so kind a 
royal master more : not if my father or my mother 
could come again, and visit me from the tomb, would 
my eyes be so blessed as they should be with the sight 
of him again, coming as from the dead. In his last 
rest my soul shall love him. He is not here, nor do I 
name him as a flatterer, but because I am thankful for 
his love and care which he had to me, a poor man ; and, 
if I knew surely that he were past all shores that the 
sun shines upon, I would invoke him as a deified thing." 

For this saying of Eumaeus the waters stood in Ulys- 






THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 303 

ses' eyes ; and he said, " My friend, to say and to affirm 
positively that he cannot be alive is to give too much 
license to incredulity. For, not to speak at random, 
but with as much solemnity as an oath comes to, I say 
to you, that Ulysses shall return ; and whenever that day 
shall be, then shall you give to me a cloak and a coat ; 
but till then I will not receive so much as a thread of 
a garment, but rather go naked : for no less than the 
gates of hell do I hate that man whom poverty can 
force to tell an untruth. Be Jove, then, witness to my 
words, that this very year, nay, ere this month be fully 
ended, your eyes shall behold Ulysses dealing ven- 
geance in his own palace upon the wrongers of his wife 
and his son." 

To give the better credence to his words, he amused 
Eumaaus with a forged story of his life ; feigning of 
himself that he was a Cretan born, and one that went 
with Idomeneus to the wars of Troy. Also he said 
that he knew Ulysses, and related various passages 
which he alleged to have happened betwixt Ulysses and 
himself; which were either true in the main, as having 
really happened between Ulysses and some other person, 
or were so like to truth, as corresponding with the 
known character and actions of Ulysses, that Eumaeus' 
incredulity was not a little shaken. Among other 
things, he asserted that he had lately been entertained 
in the court of Thesprotia, where the king's son of the 
country had told him that Ulysses had been there but 
just before him, and was gone upon a voyage to the 
oracle of Jove in Dodona, whence he shoidd shortly 
return, and a ship would be ready by the bounty of the 
Thesprotians to convoy him straight to Ithaca. "And, 



304 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

in token that what I tell you is true," said Ulysses, " if 
your king come not within the period which I have 
named, you shall have leave to give your servants com- 
mandment to take my old carcass, and throw it head- 
long from some steep rock into the sea, that poor men, 
taking example by me, may fear to lie." But Eumasus 
made answer, that that should be small satisfaction or 
pleasure to him. 

So, while they sat discoursing in this manner, supper 
was served in ; and the servants of the herdsman, who 
had been out all day in the fields, came in to supper, 
and took their seats at the fire ; for the night was bitter 
and frosty. After supper, Ulysses, who had well 
eaten and drunken, and was refreshed with the herds- 
man's good cheer, was resolved to try whether his host's 
hospitality would extend to the lending him a good 
warm mantle or rug to cover him in the night season ; 
and, framing an artful tale for the purpose, in a merry 
mood, filling a cup of Greek wine, he thus began : — 

" I will tell you a story of your king Ulysses and 
myself. If there is ever a time when a man may have 
leave to tell his own stories, it is when he has drunken 
a little too much. Strong liquor driveth the fool, and 
moves even the heart of the wise, — moves and impels 
him to sing and to dance, and break forth in pleasant 
laughters, and perchance to prefer a speech too, which 
were better kept in. When the heart is open, the 
tongue will be stirring. But you shall hear. We led 
our powers to ambush once under the walls of Troy." 

The herdsmen crowded about him, eager to hear any 
thing which related to their king Ulysses and the wars 
of Troy ; and thus he went on : — 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 305 

" I remember Ulysses and Menelaus had the direc- 
tion of that enterprise ; and they were pleased to join 
me with them in the command. I was at that time in 
some repute among men ; though fortune has played me 
a trick since, as you may perceive. But I was some- 
body in those times, and could do something. Be that 
as it may, a bitter freezing night it was, — such a night 
as this : the air cut like steel, and the sleet gathered on 
our shields like crystal. There were some twenty of us, 
that lay close couched down among the reeds and bul- 
rushes that grew in the moat that goes round the city. 
The rest of us made tolerable shift ; for every man had 
been careful to bring with him a good cloak or mantle 
to wrap over his armor and keep himself warm : but I, 
as it chanced, had left my cloak behind me, as not ex- 
pecting that the night would prove so cool ; or rather, I 
believe, because I had at that time a brave suit of new 
armor on, which, being a soldier, and having some of 
the soldier's vice about me, — vanity, — I was not will- 
ing should be hidden under a cloak. But I paid for my 
indiscretion with my sufferings ; for with the inclement 
night, and the wet of the ditch in which we lay, I was 
well-nigh frozen to death : and, when I could endure no 
longer, I jogged Ulysses, who was next to me, and had 
a nimble ear, and made known my case to him, assur- 
ing him that I must inevitably perish. He answered, in 
a low whisper, ' Hush ! lest any Greek should hear you, 
and take notice of your softness.' Not a word more he 
said, but showed as if he had no pity for the plight I 
was in. But he was as considerate as he was brave ; 
and even then, as he lay with his head reposing upon 
his hand, he was meditating how to relieve me, without 

20 



306 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

exposing my weakness to the soldiers. At last, raising 
up his head, he made as if he had been asleep, and said, 
• Friends, I have been warned in a dream to send to the 
fleet to King Agamemnon for a supply, to recruit our 
numbers ; for we are not sufficient for this enterprise : ' 
and, they believing him, one Thoas was despatched on 
that errand, who departing, for more speed, as Ulysses 
had foreseen, left his upper garment behind him, a good 
warm mantle, to which I succeeded, and, by the help of 
it, got through the night with credit. This shift Ulysses 
made for one in need ; and would to Heaven that I had 
now that strength in my limbs which made me in those 
days to be accounted fit to be a leader under Ulysses ! 
I should not then want the loan of a cloak or a man- 
tle to wrap about me, and shield my old limbs from the 
night-air." 

The tale pleased the herdsmen ; and Eumaeus, who 
more than all the rest was gratified to hear tales of 
Ulysses, true or false, said, that for his story he deserved 
a mantle and a night's lodging, which he should have ; 
and he spread for him a bed of goat and sheep skins by 
the fire : and the seeming beggar, who was indeed the 
true Ulysses, lay down and slept under that poor roof, 
in that abject disguise to which the will of Minerva had 
subjected him. 

When morning was come, Ulysses made offer to 
depart, as if he were not willing to burthen his host's 
hospitality any longer, but said that he would go and try 
the humanity of the town's folk, if any there would 
bestow upon him a bit of bread or a cup of drink. 
Perhaps the queen's suitors (he said) out of their full 
feasts would bestow a scrap on him : for he could wait 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 307 

at table, if need were, and play the nimble serving-man ; 
he could fetch wood (he said) or build a fire, prepare 
roast meat or boiled, mix the wine with water, or do 
any of those offices which recommended poor men like 
him to services in great men's houses. 

" Alas ! poor guest," said Eumaeus, " you know not 
what you speak. What should so poor and old man as 
you do at the suitors' tables? Their light minds are 
not given to such grave servitors. They must have 
youths, richly tricked out in flowing vests, with curled 
hair, like so many of Jove's cup-bearers, to fill out the 
wine to them as they sit at table, and to shift their 
trenchers. Their gorged insolence would but despise 
and make a mock at thy age. Stay here. Perhaps the 
queen or Telemachus, hearing of thy arrival, may send 
to thee of their bounty." 

As he spake these words, the steps of one crossing 
the front court were heard, and a noise of the dogs 
fawning and leaping about as for joy : by which token 
Eumaeus guesed that it was the prince, who, hearing of 
a traveller being arrived at Eumaeus' cottage that 
brought tidings of his father, was come to search the 
truth; and Eumaeus said, "It is the tread of Telema- 
chus, the son of King Ulysses." Before he could well 
speak the words, the prince was at the door ; whom 
Ulysses rising to receive, Telemachus would not suffer 
that so aged a man as he appeared should rise to do 
respect to him ; but he courteously and reverently took 
him by the hand, and inclined his head to him, as if he 
had surely known that it was his father indeed : but 
Ulysses covered his eyes with his hands, that he might 
not show the waters which stood in them. And Tele- 



308 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

machus said, w Is this the man who can tell us tidings 
of the king, my father?" 

" He brags himself to be a Cretan born," said 
Eumaeus, " and that he has been a soldier and a trav- 
eller ; but whether he speak the truth or not, he alone 
can tell. But, whatsoever he has been, what he is now 
is apparent. Such as he appears, I give him to you ; 
do what you will with him : his boast at present is that 
he is at the very best a supplicant." 

"Be he what he may," said Telemachus, "I accept 
him at your hands. But where I should bestow him I 
know not, seeing that, in the palace, his age would not 
exempt him from the scorn and contempt which my 
mother's suitors in their light minds would be sure to 
fling upon him : a mercy if he escaped without blows ; 
for they are a company of evil men, whose profession is 
wrongs and violence." 

Ulysses answered, " Since it is free for any man to 
speak in presence of your greatness, I must say that 
my heart puts on a wolfish inclination to tear and to 
devour, hearing your speech, that these suitors should 
with such injustice rage, where you should have the rule 
solely. What should the cause be? Do you wilfully 
give way to their ill manners ? or has your government 
been such as has procured ill-will towards you from your 
people ? or do you mistrust your kinsfolk and friends 
in such sort, as, without trial, to decline their aid? 
A man's kindred are they that he might trust to when 
extremities run high." 

Telemachus replied, " The kindred of Ulysses are 
few. I have no brothers to assist me in the strife. But 
the suitors are powerful in kindred and friends. The 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 309 

house of old Arcesius has had this fate from the heav- 
ens, that from old it still has been supplied with single 
heirs. To Arcesius, Laertes only was born ; from Laer- 
tes decended only Ulysses ; from Ulysses, I alone have 
sprung, whom he left so young, that from me never 
comfort arose to him. But the end of all rests in the 
hands of the gods." 

Then, Eumaeus departing to see to some necessary 
business of his herds, Minerva took a woman's shape, 
and stood in the entry of the door, and was seen to 
Ulysses : but by his son she was not seen ; for the pres- 
ences of the gods are invisible save to those to whom 
they will to reveal themselves. Nevertheless, the dogs 
which were about the door saw the goddess, and durst 
not bark, but went crouching and licking of the dust 
for fear. And, giving signs to Ulysses that the time 
was now come in which he should make himself known 
to his son, by her great power she changed back his 
shape into the same which it was before she transformed 
him ; and Telemachus, who saw the change, but nothing 
of the manner by which it was effected, only he saw 
the appearance of a king in the vigor of his age where 
but just now he had seen a worn and decrepit beggar, 
was struck with fear, and said, " Some god has done 
this house this honor ; " and he turned away his eyes, 
and would have worshipped. But his father permitted 
not, but said, " Look better at me. I am no deity : why 
put you upon me the reputation of godhead ? I am no 
more but thy father : I am even he. I am that Ulysses, 
by reason of whose absence thy youth has been exposed 
to such wrongs from injurious men." Then kissed he 
his son, nor could any longer refrain those tears which 



310 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

he had held under such mighty restraint before, though 
they would ever be forcing themselves out in spite of 
him ; but now, as if their sluices had burst, they came 
out like rivers, pouring upon the warm cheeks of his 
son. Nor yet by all these violent arguments could 
Telemachus be persuaded to believe that it was his 
father, but he said some deity had taken that shape to 
mock him ; for he affirmed, that it was not in the power 
of any man, who is sustained by mortal food, to change 
his shape so in a moment from age to youth : for " but 
now," said he, "you were all wrinkles, and were old; 
and now you look as the gods are pictured." 

His father replied, "Admire, but fear not, and know 
me to be at all parts substantially thy father, who in 
the inner powers of his mind, and the unseen workings 
of a father's love to thee, answers to his outward shape 
and pretence. There shall no more Ulysseses come here. 
I am he, that after twenty years' absence, and suffering 
a world of ill, have recovered at last the sight of my 
country earth. It was the will of Minerva that I should 
be changed as you saw me. She put me thus together : 
she puts together or takes to pieces whom she pleases. 
It is in the law of her free power to do it, — sometimes 
to show her favorites under a cloud, and poor, and again 
to restore to them their ornaments. The gods raise 
and throw down men with ease." 

Then Telemachus could hold out no longer : but he 
gave way now to a full belief and persuasion of that 
which for joy at first he could not credit, — that it was 
indeed his true and very father that stood before him ; 
and they embraced, and mingled their tears. 

Then said Ulysses, "Tell me who these suitors are, 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 311 

what are their numbers, and how stands the queen thy 
mother affected to them." 

" She bears them still in expectation," said Telema- 
ehus, "which she never means to fulfil, that she will 
accept the hand of some one of them in second nuptials ; 
for she fears to displease them by an absolute refusal. 
So from day to day she lingers them on with hope, 
which they are content to bear the deferring of, while 
they have entertainment at free cost in our palace." 

Then said Ulysses, "Keckon up their numbers, that 
we may know their strength and ours, if we, having 
none but ourselves, may hope to prevail against them." 

" O father ! " he replied, " I have ofttimes heard of 
your fame for wisdom, and of the great strength of your 
arm ; but the venturous mind which your speeches now 
indicate moves me even to amazement : for in no wise 
can it consist with wisdom or a sound mind, that two 
should try their strengths against a host. Nor five, or 
ten, or twice ten strong, are these suitors, but many 
more by much : from Dulichium came there fifty and 
two, they and their servants ; twice twelve crossed the 
seas hither from Samos ; from Zacynthus, twice ten ; of 
our native Ithacans, men of chief note, are twelve who 
aspire to the bed and crown of Penelope ; and all these 
under one strong roof, — a fearful odds against two ! My 
father, there is need of caution, lest the cup which your 
great mind so thirsts to taste of vengeance prove bitter 
to yourself in the drinking ; and therefore it were well 
that we should bethink us of some one who might assist 
us in this undertaking." 

. "Thinkest thou," said his father, "if we had Minerva 
and the king of skies to be our friends, would their 



312 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

sufficiencies make strong our part ? or must we look out 
for some further aid yet ? " 

"They you speak of are above the clouds," said Te- 
lemachus, "and are sound aids indeed, as powers that 
not only exceed human, but bear the chiefest sway 
among the gods themselves." 

Then Ulysses gave directions to his son to go and 
mingle with the suitors, and in no wise to impart his 
secret to any, — not even to the queen, his mother ; but 
to hold himself in readiness, and to have his weapons and 
his good armor in preparation. And he charged him, 
that when he himself should come to the palace, as he 
meant to follow shortly after, and present himself in his 
beggar's likeness to the suitors, that whatever he should 
see which might grieve his heart, with what foul usage and 
contumelious language soever the suitors should receive 
his father, coming in that shape, though they should 
strike and drag him by the heels along the floors, that 
he should not stir nor make offer to oppose them, fur- 
ther than by mild words to expostulate with them, until 
Minerva from heaven should give the sign which should 
be the prelude to their destruction. And Telemachus, 
promising to obey his instructions, departed: and the 
shape of Ulysses fell to what it had been before ; and he 
became to all outward appearance a beggar, in base and 
beggarly attire. 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 313 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE QUEEN'S SUITORS. — THE BATTLE OP THE BEGGARS. — THE ARMOR 
TAKEN DOWN. — THE MEETING WITH PENELOPE. 

From the house of Eumseus the seeming; bego-ar took 
his way, leaning on his staff, till he reached the palace ; 
entering in at the hall where the suitors sat at meat. 
They, in the pride of their feasting, began to break their 
jests in mirthful manner when they saw one looking 
so poor and so aged approach. He, who expected no 
better entertainment, was nothing moved at their be- 
havior ; but, as became the character which he had 
assumed, in a suppliant posture crept by turns to every 
suitor, and held out his hands for some charity, with 
such a natural and beo-aar-resemblinp; grace, that he 

DC O C ' 

might seem to have practised begging all his life : yet 
there was a sort of dignity in his most abject stoopings, 
that whoever had seen him would have said, " If it had 
pleased Heaven that this poor man had been born a 
king, he would gracefully have filled a throne." And 
some pitied him, and some gave him alms, as their 
present humors inclined them ; but the greater part re- 
viled him, and bade him begone, as one that spoiled 
their feast : for the presence of misery has this power 
with it, — that, while it stays, it can dash and overturn 
the mirth even of those who feel no pity, or wish to 
relieve it ; Nature bearing this witness of herself in the 
hearts of the most obdurate. 

Now, Telemachus sat at meat with the suitors, and 
knew that it was the king, his father, who in that shape 



314 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

begged an alms ; and when his father came and pre- 
sented himself before him in turn, as he had done to the 
suitors one by one, he gave him of his own meat which 
he had in his dish, and of his own cup to drink : and 
the suitors were past measure offended to see a pitiful 
beggar, as they esteemed him, to be so choicely regarded 
by the prince. 

Then Antinous, who was a great lord, and of chief 
note among the suitors, said, "Prince Telemachus does 
ill to encourage these wandering beggars, who go from 
place to place, affirming that they have been some con- 
siderable persons in their time ; filling the ears of such as 
hearken to them with lies, and pressing with their bold 
feet into kings' palaces. This is some saucy vagabond, 
some travelling Egyptian." 

"I see," said Ulysses, "that a poor man should get 
but little at your board : scarce should he get salt from 
your hands, if he brought his own meat." 

Lord Antinous, indignant to be answered with such 
sharpness by a supposed beggar, snatched up a stool, 
with which he smote Ulysses where the neck and shoul- 
ders join. This usage moved not Ulysses : but in his 
great heart he meditated deep evils to come upon them 
all, which for a time must be kept close ; and he went 
and sat himself down in the doorway to eat of that 
which was given him ; and he said, "For life or posses- 
sions a man will fight ; but for his belly this man smites. 
If a poor man has any god to take his part, my Lord 
Antinous shall not live to be the queen's husband." 

Then Antinous raged highly, and threatened to drag 
him by the heels, and to rend his rags about his ears, 
if he spoke another word. 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 315 

But the other suitors did in no wise approve of the 
harsh language, nor of the blow which Antinous had 
dealt ; and some of them said, " Who knows but one 
of the deities goes about, hid under that poor disguise ? 
for, in the likeness of poor pilgrims, the gods have many 
times descended to try the dispositions of men, whether 
they be humane or impious." While these things 
passed, Telemachus sat and observed all, but held his 
peace, remembering the instructions of his father. But 
secretly he waited for the sign which Minerva was to 
send from heaven. 

That day, there followed Ulysses to the court one of 
the common sort of beggars, Irus by name, — one that 
had received alms before-time of the suitors, and was 
their ordinary sport, when they were inclined (as that 
day) to give way to mirth, to see him eat and drink ; 
for he had the appetite of six men, and was of huge 
stature and proportions of body, yet had in him no 
spirit nor courage of a man. This man, thinking to 
curry favor with the suitors, and recommend himself 
especially to such a great lord as Antinous was, began 
to revile and scorn Ulysses, putting foul language upon 
him, and fairly challenging him to fight with the fist. 
But Ulysses, deeming his railings to be nothing more 
than jealousy, and that envious disposition which beggars 
commonly manifest to brothers in their trade, mildly 
besought him not to trouble him, but to enjoy that por- 
tion which the liberality of their entertainers gave him, 
as he did, quietly ; seeing that, of their bounty, there 
was sufficient for all. 

But Irus, thinking that this forbearance in Ulysses 
was nothing more than a sign of fear, so much the more 



316 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

highly stormed and bellowed, and provoked him to 
fight : and by this time the quarrel had attracted the 
notice of the suitors, who with loud laughters and shout- 
ing egged on the dispute ; and Lord Antinous swore by 
all the gods it should be a battle, and that in that hall 
the strife should be determined. To this the rest of the 
suitors, with violent clamors, acceded ; and a circle was 
made for the combatants, and a fat goat was proposed 
as the victor's prize, as at the Olympic or the Pythian 
games. Then Ulysses, seeing no remedy, or being not 
unwilling that the suitors should behold some proof of 
that strength which ere long in their own persons they 
were to taste of, stripped himself, and prepared for the 
combat. But first he demanded that he should have 
fair play shown him ; that none in that assembly should 
aid his opponent, or take part against him : for, being 
an old man, they might easily crush him with their 
strengths. And Telemachus passed his word that no 
foul play should be shown him, but that each party 
should be left to their own unassisted strengths ; and to 
this he made Antinous and the rest of the suitors 
swear. 

But when Ulysses had laid aside his garments, and 
was bare to the waist, all the beholders admired at the 
goodly sight of his large shoulders being of such exqui- 
site shape and whiteness, and at his great and brawny 
bosom, and the youthful strength which seemed to 
remain in a man thought so old ; and they said, " What 
limbs and what sinews he has ! " and coward fear seized 
on the mind of that great vast beggar, and he dropped 
his threats and his big words, and would have fled : but 
Lord Antinous stayed him, and threatened him, that, if 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 317 

he declined the combat, he would put him in a ship, and 
land him on the shores where King Echetus reigned, — 
the roughest tyrant which at that time the world con- 
tained, and who had that antipathy to rascal beggars 
such as he, that, when any landed on his coast, he would 
crop their ears and noses, and give them to the dogs to 
tear. So Irus, in whom fear of King Echetus prevailed 
above the fear of Ulysses, addressed himself to fight. 
But Ulysses, provoked to be engaged in so odious a 
strife with a fellow of his base conditions, and loathing 
longer to be made a spectacle to entertain the eyes of 
his foes, with one blow, which he struck him beneath 
the ear, so shattered the teeth and jaw-bone of this 
soon-baffled coward, that he laid him sprawling in the 
dust, with small stomach or ability to renew the con- 
test. Then, raising him on his feet, he led him bleeding 
and sputtering to the door, and put his staff into his 
hand, and bade him go use his command upon dogs and 
swine, but not presume himself to be lord of the guests 
another time, nor of the beggary ! 

The suitors applauded in their vain minds the issue 
of the contest, and rioted in mirth at the expense of 
poor Irus, who they vowed should be forthwith em- 
barked, and sent to King Echetus ; and they bestowed 
thanks on Ulysses for ridding the court of that unsavory 
morsel, as they called him : but in their inward souls 
they would not have cared if Irus had been victor, and 
Ulysses had taken the foil ; but it was mirth to them to 
see the beggars fight. In such pastimes and light 
entertainments the day wore away. 

When evening was come, the suitors betook them- 
selves to music and dancing ; and Ulysses leaned his 



318 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

back against a pillar from which certain lamps hung 
which gave light to the dancers, and he made show of 
watching the dancers ; but very different thoughts were 
in his head. And, as he stood near the lamps, the light 
fell upon his head, which was thin of hair, and bald, as 
an old man's. And Eurymachus, a suitor, taking 
occasion from some words which were spoken before, 
scoffed, and said, " Now I know for a certainty that some 
god lurks under the poor and beggarly appearance of 
this man ; for, as he stands by the lamps, his sleek head 
throws beams around it, like as it were a glory." And 
another said, " He passes his time, too, not much 
unlike the gods ; lazily living exempt from labor, tak- 
ing offerings of men." — "I warrant," said Euryma- 
chus again, " he could not raise a fence or dig a ditch 
for his livelihood, if a man would hire him to work in 
a garden." 

" I wish," said Ulysses, " that you who speak this, 
and myself, were to be tried at any task-work ; that I 
had a good crooked scythe put in my hand, that was 
sharp and strong, and you such another, where the 
grass grew longest, to be up by daybreak, mowing 
the meadows till the sun went down, not tasting of food 
till we had finished ; or that we were set to plough four 
acres in one day of good glebe land, to see whose fur- 
rows were evenest and cleanest ; or that we might have 
one wrestling-bout together ; or that in our right hands 
a good steel-headed lance were placed, to try whose 
blows fell heaviest and thickest upon the adversary's 
head-piece. I would cause you such work, as you 
should have small reason to reproach me with being 
slack at work. But you would do well to spare me 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 319 

this reproach, and to save your strength till the owner 
of this house shall return, — till the day when Ulysses 
shall return ; when, returning, he shall enter upon his 
birthright." 

This was a galling speech to those suitors, to whom 
Ulysses' return was indeed the thing which they most 
dreaded ; and a sudden fear fell upon their souls, as if 
they were sensible of the real presence of that man who 
did indeed stand amongst them, but not in that form as 
they might know him; and Eurymachus, incensed, 
snatched a massy cup which stood on a table near, and 
hurled it at the head of the supposed beggar, and but 
narrowly missed the hitting of him ; and all the suitors 
rose, as at once, to thrust him out of the hall, which 
they said his beggarly presence and his rude speeches 
had profaned. But Telemachus cried to them to for- 
bear, and not to presume to lay hands upon a wretched 
man to whom he had promised protection. He asked 
if they were mad, to mix such abhorred uproar with his 
feasts. He bade them take their food and their wine ; 
to sit up or to go to bed at their free pleasures, so long 
as he should give license to that freedom : but why 
should they abuse his banquet, or let the words which 
a poor beggar spake have power to move their spleens 
so fiercely? 

They bit their lips, and frowned for anger, to be 
checked so by a youth : nevertheless, for that time 
they had the grace to abstain, either for shame, or 
that Minerva had infused into them a terror of Ulys- 
ses' son. 

So that day's feast was concluded without bloodshed ; 
and the suitors, tired with their sports, departed sever- 



320 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

ally each man to his apartment. Only Ulysses and 
Telemachus remained. And now Telemachus, by his 
father's direction, went and brought down into the hall 
armor and lances from the armory; for Ulysses said, 
" On the morrow we shall have need of them." And 
moreover he said, " If any one shall ask why you have 
taken them down, say it is to clean them, and scour 
them from the rust which they have gathered since the 
owner of this house went for Troy." And, as Telema- 
chus stood by the armor, the lights were all gone out, 
and it was pitch dark, and the armor gave out glister- 
ing beams as of fire ; and he said to his father, " The 
pillars of the house are on fire." And his father said, 
" It is the gods who sit above the stars, and have power 
to make the night as light as the day ; " and he took 
it for a good omen. And Telemachus fell to cleaning 
and sharpening of the lances. 

Now, Ulysses had not seen his wife Penelope in all 
the time since his return ; for the queen did not care 
to mingle with the suitors at their banquets, but, as 
became one that had been Ulysses' wife, kept much in 
private, spinning, and doing her excellent housewiferies 
among her maids in the remote apartments of the 
palace. Only upon solemn days she would come down 
and show herself to the suitors. And Ulysses was filled 
with a longing desire to see his wife again, whom for 
twenty years he had not beheld ; and he softly stole 
through the known passages of his beautiful house, till 
he came where the maids were lighting the queen 
through a stately gallery that led to the chamber where 
she slept. And, when the maids saw Ulysses, they 
said, " It is the beggar who came to the court to-day, 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 321 

about whom all that uproar was stirred up in the hall : 
what does he here ? " But Penelope gave command- 
ment that he should be brought before her; for she said, 
" It may be that he has travelled, and has heard some- 
thing concerning Ulysses." 

Then was Ulysses right glad to hear himself named 
by his queen ; to find himself in no wise forgotten, nor 
her great love towards him decayed in all that time that 
he had been away. And he stood before his queen ; and 
she knew him not to be Ulysses, but supposed that he 
had been some poor traveller. And she asked him of 
what country he was. 

He told her (as he had before told to Eumaeus) that 
he was a Cretan born, and, however poor and cast 
down he now seemed, no less a man than brother to 
Idomeneus, who was grandson to King Minos ; and, 
though he now wanted bread, he had once had it in his 
power to feast Ulysses. Then he feigned how Ulysses, 
sailing for Troy, was forced by stress of weather to put 
his fleet in at a port of Crete, where for twelve days he 
was his guest, and entertained by him with all befitting 
guest-rites ; and he described the very garments which 
Ulysses had on, by which Penelope knew he had seen 
her lord. 

In this manner, Ulysses told his wife many tales of 
himself, at most but painting, but painting so near to 
the life, that the feeling of that which she took in at 
her ears became so strong, that the kindly tears ran 
down her fair cheeks, while she thought upon her lord, 
dead as she thought him, and heavily mourned the loss 
of him whom she missed, whom she could not find, 
though in very deed he stood so near her. 

21 



322 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

Ulysses was moved to see her weep : but he kept hi3 
own eyes as dry as iron or horn in their lids ; putting a 
bridle upon his strong passion, that it should not issue 
to sight. 

Then told he how he had lately been at the court of 
Thresprotia, and what he had learned concerning Ulys- 
ses there, in order as he had delivered to Eumaeus : 
and Penelope was wont to believe that there might be 
a possibility of Ulysses being alive ; and she said, " I 
dreamed a dream this morning. Methought I had 
twenty household fowl which did eat wheat steeped in 
water from my hand ; and there came suddenly from the 
clouds a crook-beaked hawk, who soused on them, and 
killed them all, trussing their necks ; then took his 
flight back up to the clouds. And, in my dream, me- 
thought that I wept and made great moan for my fowls, 
and for the destruction which the hawk had made ; and 
my maids came about me to comfort me. And, in the 
height of my griefs, the hawk came back ; and, lighting 
upon the beam of my chamber, he said to me in a man's 
voice, which sounded strangely, even in my dream, to 
hear a hawk to speak : * Be of good cheer,' he said, * O 
daughter of Icarius ! for this is no dream which thou 
hast seen, but that which shall happen to thee indeed. 
Those household fowl which thou lamentest so without 
reason are the suitors who devour thy substance, even 
as thou sawest the fowl eat from thy hand ; and the 
hawk is thy husband, who is coming to give death to 
the suitors.' And I awoke, and went to see to my 
fowls, if they were alive, whom I found eating wheat 
from their troughs, all well and safe as before my 
dream." 






THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 323 

Then said Ulysses, "This dream can endure no other 
interpretation than that which the hawk gave to it, who 
is your lord, and who is coming quickly to effect all 
that his words told you." 

" Your words," she said, " my old guest, are so sweet, 
that, would you sit and please me with your speech, my 
ears would never let my eyes close their spheres for 
very joy of your discourse : but none that is merely 
mortal can live without the death of sleep, so the gods 
who are without death themselves have ordained it, to 
keep the memory of our mortality in our minds, while 
we experience, that, as much as we live, we die every 
day ; in which consideration I will ascend my bed, 
which I have nightly watered with my tears since he 
that was the joy of it departed for that bad city : " she 
so speaking, because she could not bring her lips to 
name the name of Troy, so much hated. So for that 
night they parted, — Penelope to her bed, and Ulysses 
to his son, and to the armor and the lances in the hall ; 
where they sat up all night cleaning and watching by 
the armor. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE MADNESS FROM ABOVE. —THE BOW OE ULYSSES. — THE SLAUGHTER. — 
THE CONCLUSION. 

When daylight appeared, a tumultuous concourse of 
the suitors again filled the hall ; and some wondered, 
and some inquired, what meant that glittering store of 
armor and lances which lay on heaps by the entry of the 
door : and all that asked, Telemachus made reply, that 



324 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

he had caused them to be taken down to cleanse them 
of the rust and of the stain which they had contracted 
by lying so long unused, even ever since his father went 
for Troy ; and with that answer their minds were easily 
satisfied. So to their feasting and vain rioting again 
they fell. Ulysses, by Telemachus' order, had a seat 
and a mess assigned him in the doorway ; and he had 
his eye ever on the lances. And it moved gall in some 
of the great ones there present to have their feast still 
dulled with the society of that wretched beggar, as they 
deemed him ; and they reviled and spurned at him with 
their feet. Only there was one Phiketius, who had 
something of a better nature than the rest, that spake 
kindly to him, and had his age in respect. He, coming 
up to Ulysses, took him by the hand with a kind of fear, 
as if touched exceedingly with imagination of his great 
worth, and said thus to him : " Hail, father stranger ! 
My brows have sweat to see the injuries which you have 
received ; and my eyes have broken forth in tears when I 
have only thought, that, such being oftentimes the lot of 
worthiest men, to this plight Ulysses may be reduced, 
and that he now may wander from place to place as you 
do : for such, who are compelled by need to range here 
and there, and have no firm home to fix their feet upon, 
God keeps them in this earth, as under water; so are 
they kept down and depressed. And a dark thread is 
sometimes spun in the fates of kings." 

At this bare likening of the beggar to Ulysses, Minerva 
from heaven made the suitors for foolish joy to go mad, 
and roused them to such a laughter as would never stop : 
they laughed without power of ceasing ; their eyes stood 
full of tears for violent joys. But fears and horrible 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 325 

misgivings succeeded ; and one among them stood up 
and prophesied : "Ah, wretches !" he said, "what mad- 
ness from heaven has seized you, that you can laugh ? 
See you not that your meat drops blood? A night, like 
the night of death, wraps you about ; you shriek with- 
out knowing it ; your eyes thrust forth tears ; the fixed 
walls, and the beam that bears the whole house up, fall 
blood ; ghosts choke up the entry ; full is the hall with 
apparitions of murdered men ; under your feet is hell ; 
the sun falls from heaven, and it is midnight at noon." 
But, like men whom the gods had infatuated to their 
destruction, they mocked at his fears ; and Eurymachus 
said, " This man is surely mad : conduct him forth into 
the market-place ; set him in the light ; for he dreams 
that 'tis nio-ht within the house." 

o 

But Theoclymenus (for that was the prophet's name) , 
whom Minerva had graced with a prophetic spirit, that 
he, foreseeing, might avoid the destruction which await- 
ed them, answered, and said, "Eurymachus, I will not 
require a guide of thee : for I have eyes and ears, the 
use of both my feet, and a sane mind within me ; and 
with these I will go forth of the doors, because I know 
the imminent evils which await all you that stay, by 
reason of this poor guest, who is a favorite with all the 
gods." So saying, he turned his back upon those in- 
hospitable men, and went away home, and never returned 
to the palace. 

These words which he spoke were not unheard by 
Telemachus, who kept still his eye upon his father, ex- 
pecting fervently when he would give the sign which 
was to precede the slaughter of the suitors. 

They, dreaming of no such thing, fell sweetly to their 



326 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

dinner, as joying in the great store of banquet which was 
heaped in full tables about them ; but there reigned not a 
bitterer banquet planet in all heaven than that which hung 
over them this day, by secret destination of Minerva. 

There was a bow which Ulysses left when he went for 
Troy. It had lain by since that time, out of use, and 
unstrung ; for no man had strength to draw that bow 
save Ulysses. So it had remained as a monument of 
the great strength of its master. This bow, with the 
quiver of arrows belonging thereto, Telemachus had 
brought down from the armory on the last night, along 
with the lances : and now Minerva, intending to do 
Ulysses an honor, put it into the mind of Telemachus 
to propose to the suitors to try who was strongest to 
draw that bow ; and he promised, that, to the man who 
should be able to draw that bow, his mother should be 
given in marriage, — Ulysses' wife the prize to him who 
should bend the bow of Ulysses. 

There was great strife and emulation stirred up among 
the suitors at those words of the Prince Telemachus. 
And to grace her son's words, and to confirm the prom- 
ise which he had made, Penelope came and showed her- 
self that day to the suitors ; and Minerva made her that 
she appeared never so comely in their sight as that day : 
and they were inflamed with the beholding of so much 
beauty, proposed as the price of so great manhood ; and 
they cried out, that if all those heroes who sailed to 
Colchis for the rich purchase of the golden-fleeced ram 
had seen earth's richer prize, Penelope, they would not 
have made their voyage, but would have vowed their 
valors and their lives to her ; for she was at all parts 
faultless. 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 327 

And she said, " The gods have taken my beauty from 
me since my lord went for Troy." But Telemachus 
willed his mother to depart, and not be present at that 
contest ; for he said, " It may be, some rougher strife 
shall chance of this than may be expedient for a woman 
to witness." And she retired, she and her maids, and 
left the hall. 

Then the bow was brought into the midst, and a mark 
was set up by Prince Telemachus ; and Lord Antinous, 
as the chief among the suitors, had the first offer ; and 
he took the bow, and, fitting an arrow to the string, he 
strove to bend it. But not with all his might and main 
could he once draw together the ends of that tough bow ; 
and, when he found how vain a thing it was to endeavor 
to draw Ulysses' bow, he desisted, blushing for shame 
and for mere anger. Then Eurymachus adventured, 
but with no better suceess : but as it had torn the hands 
of Antinous, so did the bow tear and strain his hands, 
and marred his delicate fingers ; yet could he not once 
stir the string. Then called he to the attendants to 
bring fat and unctuous matter ; which melting at the 
fire, he dipped the bow therein, thinking to supple it, 
and make it more pliable : but not with all the helps of 
art could he succeed in making it to move. After him 
Liodes and Amphinomus and Polybus and Euryno- 
mus and Polyctorides essayed their strength ; but not 
any one of them, or of the rest of those aspiring suitors, 
had any better luck : yet not the meanest of them there 
but thought himself well worthy of * Ulysses' wife ; 
though, to shoot with Ulysses' bow, the completest 
champion among them was by proof found too feeble. 

Then Ulysses prayed that he might have leave to try : 



328 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

and immediately a clamor was raised among the suitors, 
because of his petition ; and they scorned and swelled 
with rage at his presumption, and that a beggar should 
seek to contend in a game of such noble mastery. But 
Telemachus ordered that the bow should be given him, 
and that he should have leave to try, since they had 
failed ; "for," he said, "the bow is mine, to give or to 
withhold : " and none durst gainsay the prince. 

Then Ulysses gave a sign to his son, and he com- 
manded the doors of the hall to be made fast ; and all 
wondered at his words, but none could divine the cause. 
And Ulysses took the bow into his hands ; and, before he 
essayed to bend it, he surveyed it at all parts, to see 
whether, by long lying by, it had contracted any stiff- 
ness which hindered the drawing : and, as he was busied 
in the curious surveying of his bow, some of the suitors 
mocked him, and said, "Past doubt, this man is a right 
cunning archer, and knows his craft well. See how he 
turns it over and over, and looks into it, as if he could 
see through the wood ! " And others said, " We wish 
some one would tell out gold into our laps but for so long 
a time as he shall be in drawing of that string." But 
when he had spent some little time in making proof of 
the bow, and had found it to be in good plight, like as 
an harper in tuning of his harp draws out a string, with 
such ease or much more did Ulysses draw to the head 
the string of his own tough bow ; and, in letting of it go, 
it twanged with such a shrill noise as a swallow makes 
when it sings through the air : which so much amazed 
the suitors, that their colors came and went, and the 
skies gave out a noise of thunder, which at heart cheered 
Ulysses ; for he knew that now his long labors, by the 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 329 

disposal of the Fates, drew to an end. Then fitted he an 
arrow to the bow ; and, drawing it to the head, he sent 
it right to the mark which the prince had set up. Which 
done, he said to Telemachus, "You have got no dis- 
grace yet by your guest ; for I have struck the mark I 
shot at, and gave myself no such trouble in teasing the 
bow with fat and fire as these men did, but have made 
proof that my strength is not impaired, nor my age so 
weak and contemptible as these were pleased to think 
it. But come : the day going down calls us to supper ; 
after which succeed poem and harp, and all delights 
which used to crown princely banquetings." 

So saying, he beckoned to his son, who straight girt 
his sword to his side, and took one of the lances (of 
which there lay great store from the armory) in his 
hand, and, armed at all points, advanced towards his 
father. 

The upper rags which Ulysses wore fell from his 
shoulder, and his own kingly likeness returned ; when 
he rushed to the great hall-door with bow and quiver 
full of shafts, which down at his feet he poured, and in 
bitter words presignified his deadly intent to the suitors. 
"Thus far," he said, "this contest has been decided 
harmless : now for us there rests another mark, harder 
to hit, but which my hands shall essay notwithstanding, 
if Phoebus, god of archers, be pleased to give me the 
mastery." With that he let fly a deadly arrow at An- 
tinous, which pierced him in the throat, as he was in 
the act of lifting a cup of wine to his mouth. Amaze- 
ment seized the suitors as their great champion fell 
dead; and they raged highly against Ulysses, and said 
that it should prove the dearest shaft which he ever let 



330 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

fly ; for he had slain a man whose like breathed not in 
any part of the kingdom : and they flew to their arms, 
and would have seized the lances ; but Minerva struck 
them with dimness of sight, that they went erring up 
and down the hall, not knowing where to find them. 
Yet so infatuated were they by the displeasure of Heaven, 
that they did not see the imminent peril which impended 
over them ; but every man believed that this accident 
had happened beside the intention of the doer. Fools ! 
to think by shutting their eyes to evade destiny, or that 
any other cup remained for them but that which their 
great Antinous had tasted ! 

Then Ulysses revealed himself to all in that presence, 
and that he was the man whom they held to be dead at 
Troy, whose palace they had usurped, whose wife in his 
lifetime they had sought in impious marriage, and that 
for this reason destruction was come upon them. And 
he dealt his deadly arrows among them, and there was 
no avoiding him, nor escaping from his horrid person ; 
and Telemachus by his side plied them thick with those 
murderous lances from which there was no retreat, till 
fear itself made them valiant, and danger gave them 
eyes to understand the peril. Then they which had 
swords drew them, and some with shields that could find 
them, and some with tables and benches snatched up in 
haste, rose in a mass to overwhelm and crush those two : 
yet they singly bestirred themselves like men, and de- 
fended themselves against that great host ; and through 
tables, shields, and all, right through, the arrows of Ulys- 
ses clove, and the irresistible lances of Telemachus ; and 
many lay dead, and all had wounds. And Minerva, in 
the likeness of a bird, sate upon the beam which went 



THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 331 

across the hall, clapping her wings with a fearful noise : 
and sometimes the great bird would fly among them, 
cuffing at the swords and at the lances, and up and down 
the hall would go, beating her wings, and troubling 
every thing, that it was frightful to behold ; and it frayed 
the blood from the cheeks of those heaven-hated suitors. 
But to Ulysses and his son she appeared in her own 
divine similitude, with her snake-fringed shield, a god- 
dess armed, fighting their battles. Nor did that dread- 
ful pair desist till they had laid all their foes at their 
feet. At their feet they lay in shoals : like fishes when 
the fishermen break up their nets, so they lay gasping 
and sprawling at the feet of Ulysses and his son. And 
Ulysses remembered the prediction of Tiresias, which 
said that he was to perish by his own guests, unless he 
slew those who knew him not. 

Then certain of the queen's household went up, and 
told Penelope what had happened ; and how her lord 
Ulysses was come home, and had slain the suitors. 
But she gave no heed to their words, but thought that 
some frenzy possessed them, or that they mocked her; 
for it is the property of such extremes of sorrow as she 
had felt not to believe when any great joy cometh. And 
she rated and chid them exceedingly for troubling her. 
But they the more persisted in their asseverations of the 
truth of what they had affirmed ; and some of them had 
seen the slaughtered bodies of the suitors dragged forth 
of the hall. And they said, " That poor guest, whom 
you talked with last night, was Ulysses." Then she was 
yet more fully persuaded that they mocked her ; and she 
wept. But they said, "This thing is true which we 
have told. We sat within, in an inner room in the 



332 THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 

palace, and the doors of the hall were shut on us : but 
we heard the cries and the groans of the men that were 
killed, but saw nothing, till at length your son called to 
us to come in ; and, entering, we saw Ulysses standing 
in the midst of the slaughtered." But she, persisting 
in her unbelief, said that it was some god which had 
deceived them to think it was the person of Ulysses. 

By this time, Telemachus and his father had cleansed 
their hands from the slaughter, and were come to where 
the queen was talking with those of her household ; and, 
when she saw Ulysses, she stood motionless, and had no 
power to speak, — sudden surprise and joy and fear and 
many passions so strove within her. Sometimes she 
was clear that it was her husband that she saw, and 
sometimes the alteration which twenty years had made 
in his person (yet that was not much) perplexed her, 
that she knew not what to think, and for joy she could 
not believe, and yet for joy she would not but believe ; 
and, above all, that sudden change from a beggar to a 
king troubled her, and wrought uneasy scruples in her 
mind. But Telemachus, seeing her strangeness, blamed 
her, and called her an ungentle and tyrannous mother ; 
and said that she showed a too great curiousness of 
modesty to abstain from embracing his father, and to 
have doubts of his person, when, to all present, it was 
evident that he was the very real and true Ulysses. 

Then she mistrusted no longer ; but ran and fell upon 
Ulysses' neck, and said, " Let not my husband be angry 
that I held off so long with strange delays : it is the 
gods, who, severing us for so long time, have caused 
this unseemly distance in me. If Menelaus' wife had 
used half my caution, she would never have taken so 






THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES. 333 

freely to a stranger's bed ; and she might have spared 
us all these plagues which have come upon us through 
her shameless deed." 

These words, with which Penelope excused herself, 
wrought more affection in Ulysses than if, upon a first 
sight, she had given up herself implicitly to his em- 
braces ; and he wept for joy to possess a wife so discreet, 
so answering to his own staid mind, that had a depth 
of wit proportioned to his own, and one that held chaste 
virtue at so high a price. And he thought the possession 
of such a one cheaply purchased with the loss of all 
Circe's delights, and Calypso's hnmortality of joys ; and 
his long labors and his severe sufferings past seemed as 
nothing, now they were crowned with the enjoyment of 
his virtuous and true wife, Penelope. And as sad men 
at sea, whose ship has gone to pieces nigh shore, swim- 
ming for their lives, all drenched in foam and brine, 
crawl up to some poor patch of land, which they take 
possession of with as great a joy as if they had the 
world given them in fee, — with such delight did this 
chaste wife cling to her lord restored, till the dark night 
fast coming on reminded her of that more intimate and 
happy union, when, in her long- widowed bed, she 
should once again clasp a living Ulysses. 

So, from that time, the land had rest from the suitors. 
And the happy Ithacans, with songs and solemn sacri- 
fices of praise to the gods, celebrated the return of Ulys- 
ses ; for he that had been so long absent was returned 
to wreak the evil upon the heads of the doers : in the 
place where they had done the evil, there wreaked he 
his vengeance upon them. 



TALES. 






TALES. 



EEMINISCENCES OF JUKE JUDKINS, ESQ., 

OF BIRMINGHAM.* 

I am the only son of a considerable brazier in Birming- 
ham, who, dying in 1803, left me successor to the 
business, with no other encumbrance than a sort of 
rent-charge, which I am enjoined to pay out of it, of 
ninety-three pounds sterling per annum, to his widow, 
my mother ; and which the improving state of the con- 
cern, I bless God, has hitherto enabled me to discharge 
with punctuality. (I say, I am enjoined to pay the 
said sum, but not strictly obligated : that is to say, as 
the will is worded, I believe the law would relieve me 
from the payment of it ; but the wishes of a dying pa- 
rent should in some sort have the effect of law.) So 
that, though the annual profits of my business, on an 
average of the last three or four years, would appear 
to an indifferent observer, who should inspect my shop- 
books, to amount to the sum of one thousand three 
hundred and three pounds, odd shillings, the real pro- 
ceeds in that time have fallen short of that sum to the 
amount of the aforesaid payment of ninety-three pounds 
sterling annually. 

* From " The New Monthly Magazine," 1826. 

22 [337] 



338 EEMINISCENCES OF JUKE JUDKINS. 

I was always my father's favorite. He took a delight, 
to the very last, in recounting the little sagacious tricks 
and innocent artifices of my childhood. One manifes- 
tation thereof I never heard him repeat without tears 
of joy trickling down his cheeks. It seems, that when 
I quitted the parental roof (Aug. 27, 1788), being then 
six years and not quite a month old, to proceed to the 
Free School at Warwick, where my father was a sort 
of trustee, my mother — as mothers are usually provi- 
dent on these occasions — had stuffed the pockets of the 
coach, which was to convey me and six more children of 
my own growth that were going to be entered along 
with me at the same seminary, with a prodigious quan- 
tity of gingerbread, which I remember my father said 
was more than was needed : and so indeed it was ; for, if 
I had been to eat it all myself, it would have got stale 
and mouldy before it had been half spent. The conside- 
ration whereof set me upon my contrivances how I might 
secure to myself as much of the gingerbread as would 
keep good for the next two or three days, and yet none 
of the rest in manner be wasted. I had a little pair 
of pocket-compasses, which I usually carried about me 
for the purpose of making draughts and measurements, 
at which I was always very ingenious, of the various en- 
gines and mechanical inventions in which such a town 
as Birmingham abounded. By the means of these, 
and a small penknife which my father had given me, I 
cut out the one-half of the cake, calculating that the 
remainder would reasonably serve my turn ; and subdi- 
viding it into many little slices, which were curious to 
see for the neatness and niceness of their proportion, I 
sold it out in so many pennyworths to my young com- 



REMINISCENCES OF JUKE JUDKINS. 339 

p anions as served us all the way to Warwick, which is 
a distance of some twenty miles from this town : and 
very merry, I assure you, we made ourselves with it, 
feasting all the way. By this honest stratagem, I put 
double the prime cost of the gingerbread into my purse, 
and secured as much as I thought would keep good and 
moist for my next two or three days' eating. When I 
told this to my parents on their first visit to me at 
Warwick, my father (good man) patted me on the 
cheek, and stroked my head, and seemed as if he could 
never make enough of me ; but my mother unaccount- 
ably burst into tears, and said "it was a very niggardly 
action," or some such expression, and that " she would 
rather it would please God to take me" — meaning, 
God help me, that I should die — "than that she should 
live to see me grow up a mean man : " which shows the 
difference of parent from parent, and how some mothers 
are more harsh and intolerant to their children than 
some fathers ; when we might expect quite the contrary. 
My father, however, loaded me with presents from that 
time, which made me the envy of my school-fellows. 
As I felt this growing disposition in them, I naturally 
sought to avert it by all the means in my power ; and 
from that time I used to eat my little packages of fruit, 
and other nice things, in a corner, so privately that I 
was never found out. Once, I remember, I had a 
huge apple sent me, of that sort which they call cats' - 
heads. I concealed this all day under my pillow ; and 
at night, but not before I had ascertained that my bed- 
fellow was sound asleep, — which I did by pinching him 
rather smartly two or three times, which he seemed to 
perceive no more than a dead person, though once or 



340 REMINISCENCES OF JUKE JUDKINS. 

twice he made a motion as he would turn, which fright- 
ened me, — I say, when I had made all sure, I fell to 
work upon my apple ; and, though it was as big as 
an ordinary man's two fists, I made shift to get through 
before it was time to get up. And a more delicious 
feast I never made ; thinking all night what a good 
parent I had (I mean my father) to send me so many 
nice things, when the poor lad that lay by me had no 
parent or friend in the world to send him any thing nice : 
and, thinking of his desolate condition, I munched and 
munched as silently as I could, that I might not set 
him a-longing if he overheard me. And yet, for all this 
considerateness and attention to other people's feelings, 
I was never much a favorite with my school-fellows ; 
which I have often wondered at, seeing that I never 
defrauded any one of them of the value of a halfpenny, 
or told stories of them to their master, as some little 
lying boys would do, but was ready to do any of them 
all the services in my power that were consistent 
with my own well-doing. I think nobody can be ex- 
pected to go further than that. But I am detaining 
my reader too long in recording of my juvenile days. 
It is time I should go forward to a season when it 
became natural that I should have some thoughts of 
marrying, and, as they say, settling in the world. 
Nevertheless, my reflections on what I may call the 
boyish period of my life may have their use to some 
readers. It is pleasant to trace the man in the boy ; 
to observe shoots of generosity in those young years ; 
and to watch the progress of liberal sentiments, and 
what I may call a genteel way of thinking, which is 
discernible in some children at a very early age, and 



REMINISCENCES OF JUKE JUDKINS. 341 

usually lays the foundation of all that is praiseworthy in 
the manly character afterwards. 

With the warmest inclinations towards that way of 
life, and a serious conviction of its superior advantages 
over a single one, it has been the strange infelicity of my 
lot never to have entered into the respectable estate of 
matrimony. Yet I was once very near it. I courted 
a young woman in my twenty-seventh year ; for so 
early I began to feel symptoms of the tender passion ! 
She was well to do in the world, as they call it ; but 
yet not such a fortune, as, all things considered, per- 
haps I might have pretended to. It was not my own 
choice altogether ; but my mother very strongly pressed 
me to it. She was always putting it to me, that " I had 
comings-in sufficient, — that I need not stand upon a 
portion ; " though the young woman, to do her justice, 
had considerable expectations, which yet did not quite 
come up to my mark, as I told you before. She had 
this saying always in her mouth, that "I had money 
enough ; that it was time I enlarged my housekeeping, 
and to show a spirit befitting my circumstances." In 
short, what with her importunities, and my own desires 
in part co-operating, — for, as I said, I was not yet 
quite twenty-seven, — a time when the youthful feelings 
may be pardoned, if they show a little impetuosity, — 
I resolved, I say, upon all these considerations, to set 
about the business of courting in right earnest. I was 
a young man then ; and having a spice of romance in 
my character (as the reader has doubtless observed long 
ago) , such as that sex is apt to be taken with, I had 
reason in no long time to think my addresses were any 
thing but disagreeable. Certainly the happiest part of 



342 REMINISCENCES OF JUKE JUDKINS. 

a young man's life is the time when he is going a-court- 
ing. All the generous impulses are then awake, and 
he feels a double existence in participating his hopes 
and wishes with another being. Return yet again for 
a brief moment, ye visionary views, — transient en- 
chantments ! ye moonlight rambles with Cleora in the 
Silent Walk at Vauxhall, (N.B. — About a mile from 
Birmingham, and resembling the gardens of that name 
near London, only that the price of admission is lower,) 
when the nightingale has suspended her notes in June 
to listen to our loving discourses, while the moon 
was overhead ! (for we generally used to take our tea 
at Cleora's mother's before we set out, not so much to 
save expenses as to avoid the publicity of a repast in 
the gardens, — coming in much about the time of half- 
price, as they call it,) — ye soft intercommunions of 
soul, when, exchanging mutual vows, we prattled of 
coming felicities ! The loving disputes we have had 
under those trees, when this house (planning our future 
settlement) was rejected, because, though cheap, it was 
dull ; and the other house was given up, because, though 
agreeably situated, it was too high-rented ! — one was too 
much in the heart of the town, another was too far from 
business. These minutiae will seem impertinent to the 
aged and the prudent. I write them only to the young. 
Young lovers, and passionate as being young (such 
were Cleora and I then), alone can understand me. 
After some weeks wasted, as I may now call it, in this 
sort of amorous colloquy, we at length fixed upon the 
house in the High Street, No. 203, just vacated by the 
death of Mr. Hutton of this town, for our future resi- 
dence. I had all the time lived in lodgings (only 



REMINISCENCES OF JUKE JUDKINS. 343 

renting a shop for business) , to be near my mother, — 
near, I say : not in the same house ; for that would have 
been to introduce confusion into our housekeeping, 
which it was desirable to keep separate. Oh the loving 
wrangles, the endearing differences, I had with Cleora, 
before we could quite make up our minds to the house 
that was to receive us ! — I pretending, for argument's 
sake, the rent was too high, and she insisting that the 
taxes were moderate in proportion ; and love at last 
reconciling us in the same choice. I think at that time, 
moderately speaking, she might have had any thing out 
of me for asking. I do not, nor shall ever, regret that 
my character at that time was marked with a tinge 
of prodigality. Age comes fast enough upon us, and, 
in its good time, will prune away all that is inconvenient 
in these excesses. Perhaps it is right that it should do 
so. Matters, as I said, were ripening to a conclusion 
between us, only the house was yet not absolutely taken, 
— some necessary arrangements, which the ardor of my 
youthful impetuosity could hardly brook at that time 
(love and youth will be precipitate), — some prelimi- 
nary arrangements, I say, with the landlord, respecting 
fixtures, — very necessary things to be considered in a 
young man about to settle in the world, though not 
very accordant with the impatient state of my then 
passions, — some obstacles about the valuation of the 
fixtures, — had hitherto precluded (and I shall always 
think providentially) my final closes with his offer ; 
when one of those accidents, which, unimportant in 
themselves, often arise to give a turn to the most serious 
intentions of our life, intervened, and put an end at 
once to my projects of wiving and of housekeeping. 



344 KEMINISCENCES OF JUKE JUDKINS. 

I was never much given to theatrical entertainments ; 
that is, at no time of my life was I ever what they call 
a regular play -goer : but on some occasion of a benefit- 
night, which was expected to be very productive, and 
indeed turned out so, Cleora expressing a desire to be 
present, I could do no less than offer, as I did very 
willingly, to squire her and her mother to the pit. At 
that time, it was not customary in our town for trades- 
folk, except some of the very topping ones, to sit, as 
they now do, in the boxes. At the time appointed, I 
waited upon the ladies, who had brought with them a 
young man, a distant relation, whom it seems they had 
invited to be of the party. This a little disconcerted 
me, as I had about me barely silver enough to pay for 
our three selves at the door, and did not at first know 
that their relation had proposed paying for himself. 
However, to do the young man justice, he not only paid 
for himself, but for the old lady besides ; leaving me 
only to pay for two, as it were. In our passage to the 
theatre, the notice of Cleora was attracted to some 
orange wenches that stood about the doors vending 
their commodities. She was leaning on my arm ; and 
I could feel her every now and then giving me a nudge, 
as it is called, which I afterwards discovered were hints 
that I should buy some oranges. It seems, it is a cus- 
tom at Birmingham, and perhaps in other places, when 
a gentleman treats ladies to the play, — especially when a 
full night is expected, and that the house will be incon- 
veniently warm, — to provide them with this kind of 
fruit, oranges being esteemed for their cooling property. 
But how could I guess at that, never having treated 
ladies to a play before, and being, as I said, quite a 



REMINISCENCES OF JUKE JUDKINS. 345 

novice at these kind of entertainments? At last, she 
spoke plain out, and begged that I would buy some of 
"those oranges," pointing to a particular barrow. But, 
when I came to examine the fruit, I did not think the 
quality of it was answerable to the price. In this way, 
I handled several baskets of them ; but something in 
them all displeased me. Some had thin rinds, and some 
were plainly over-ripe, which is as great a fault as not 
being ripe enough ; and I could not (what they call) 
make a bargain. While I stood haggling with the 

o Bo o 

women, secretly determining to put off my purchase till 
I should get within the theatre, where I expected we 
should have better choice, the young man, the cousin 
(who, it seems, had left us without my missing him) , came 
running to us with his pockets stuffed out with oranges, 
inside and out, as they say. It seems, not liking the 
look of the barrow-fruit any more than myself, he had 
slipped away to an eminent fruiterer's, about three doors 
distant, which I never had the sense to think of, and 
had lain out a matter of two shillings in some of the 
best St. Michael's, I think, I ever tasted. What a 
little hinge, as I said before, the most important affairs 
in life may turn upon ! The mere inadvertence to the 
fact that there was an eminent fruiterer's within three 
doors of us, though we had just passed it without the 
thought once occurring to me, which he had taken ad- 
vantage of, lost me the affection of my Cleora. From 
that time, she visibly cooled towards me ; and her par- 
tiality was as visibly transferred to this cousin. I was 
long unable to account for this change in her behavior ; 
when one day, accidentally discoursing of oranges to 
my mother, alone, she let drop a sort of reproach to me, 



346 CUPID'S REVENGE. 

as if I had offended Cleora by my nearness, as she 
called it, that evening. Even now, when Cleora has 
been wedded some years to that same officious relation, 
as I may call him, I can hardly be persuaded that such 
a trifle could have been the motive to her inconstancy ; 
for could she suppose that I would sacrifice my 'dearest 
hopes in her to the paltry sum of two shillings, when I 
was going to treat her to the play, and her mother too 
(an expense of more than four times that amount) , if 
the young man had not interfered to pay for the latter, 
as I mentioned ? But the caprices of the sex are past 
finding out : and I begin to think my mother was in the 
right ; for doubtless women know women better than 
we can pretend to know them.* 



CUPID'S REVENGE.f 

Leontius, Duke of Lycia, who in times past had 
borne the character of a wise and just governor, and 
was endeared to all ranks of his subjects, in his latter 
days fell into a sort of dotage, which manifested itself 
in an extravagant fondness for his daughter Hidaspes. 
This young maiden, with the Prince Leucippus, her 
brother, were the only remembrances left to him of a 

* These " Reminiscences " were advertised to be continued ; but this 
chapter of them is all that ever appeared. — Editor. 

f This story was originally published in " Harper's Magazine." It was 
printed from the author's manuscript, which the publishers purchased of 
Lamb's friend, Thomas Allsop. By the kind permission of the Messrs. 
Harper, "Cupid's Revenge" appears in this volume. — Editor. 



CUPIDS REVENGE. 347 

deceased and beloved consort. For her, nothing was 
thought too precious. Existence was of no value to 
him but as it afforded opportunities of gratifying her 
wishes- To be instrumental in relieving her from the 
least little pain or grief, he would have lavished his 
treasures to the giving-away of the one-half of his 
dukedom. 

All this deference on the part of the parent had yet 
no power upon the mind of the daughter to move her 
at any time to solicit any unbecoming suit, or to dis- 
turb the even tenor of her thoughts. The humility 
and dutifulness of her carriage seemed to keep pace 
with his apparent willingness to release her from the 
obligations of either. She might have satisfied her 
wildest humors and caprices ; but, in truth, no such 
troublesome guests found harbor in the bosom of the 
quiet and unaspiring maiden. 

Thus far the prudence of the princess served to coun- 
teract any ill effects which this ungovernable partiality 
in a parent was calculated to produce in a less virtuous 
nature than Hidaspes' ; and this foible of the duke's, so 
long as no evil resulted from it, was passed over by the 
courtiers as a piece of harmless frenzy. 

But upon a solemn day, — a sad one, as it proved for 
Lycia, — when the returning anniversary of the prin- 
cess's birth was kept with extraordinary rejoicings, the 
infatuated father set no bounds to his folly, but would 
have his subjects to do homage to her for that day, as to 
their natural sovereign ; as if he, indeed, had been dead, 
and she, to the exclusion of the male succession, was be- 
come the rightful ruler of Lycia. He saluted her by the 
style of Duchess ; and with a terrible oath, in the presence 



348 CUPID'S REVENGE. 

of his nobles, he confirmed to her the grant of all things 
whatsoever that she should demand on that day, and 
for the six next following ; and if she should ask any 
thing, the execution of which must be deferred until 
after his death, he pronounced a dreadful curse upon 
his son and successor if he failed to see to the per- 
formance of it. 

Thus encouraged, the princess stepped forth with a 
modest boldness ; and, as if assured of no denial, spake 
as follows. 

But, before we acquaint you with the purport of her 
speech, we must premise, that in the land of Lycia, 
which was at that time pagan, above all their other 
gods the inhabitants did in an especial manner adore the 
deity who was supposed to have influence in the dispos- 
ing of people's affections in love. Him, by the name 
of God Cupid, they feigned to be a beautiful boy, and 
winged; as indeed, between young persons, these frantic 
passions are usually least under constraint ; while the 
wings might signify the haste with which these ill-judged 
attachments are commonly dissolved, and do indeed go 
away as lightly as they come, flying away in an instant 
to light upon some newer fancy. They painted him 
blindfolded, because these silly affections of lovers make 
them blind to the defects of the beloved object, which 
every one is quick-sighted enough to discover but them- 
selves ; or because love is for the most part led blindly, 
rather than directed by the open eye of the judgment, 
in the hasty choice of a mate. Yet, with that incon- 
sistency of attributes with which the heathen people 
commonly over-complimented their deities, this blind 
love, this Cupid, they figured with a bow and arrows ; 



CUPID'S REVENGE. 349 

and, being sightless, they yet feigned him to be a nota- 
ble archer and an unerring marksman. No heart was 
supposed to be proof against the point of his inevitable 
dart. By such incredible fictions did these poor pagans 
make a shift to excuse their vanities, and to give a sanc- 
tion to their irregular affections, under the notion that 
love was irresistible ; whereas, in a well-regulated mind, 
these amorous conceits either find no place at all, or, 
having gained a footing, are easily stifled in the begin- 
ning by a wise and manly resolution. 

This frenzy in the people had long been a source of 
disquiet to the discreet princess ; and many were the 
conferences she had held with the virtuous prince, her 
brother, as to the best mode of taking off the minds 
of the Lycians from this vain superstition. An occa- 
sion, furnished by the blind grant of the old duke, their 
father, seemed now to present itself. 

The courtiers then, being assembled to hear the 
demand which the princess should make, began to con- 
jecture, each one according to the bent of his own 
disposition, what the thing would be that she should 
ask for. One said, " Now surely she will ask to have 
the disposal of the revenues of some wealthy prov- 
ince, to lay them out — as was the manner of Eastern 
princesses — in costly dresses and jewels becoming a 
lady of so great expectancies." Another thought that 
she would seek an extension of power, as women natu- 
rally love rule and dominion. But the most part were 
in hope that she was about to beg the hand of some 
neighbor prince in marriage, who, by the wealth and con- 
tiguity of his dominions, might add strength and safety 
to the realm of Lycia. But in none of these things was 



350 CUPID'S EEVENGE. 

the expectation of these crafty and worldly-minded 
courtiers gratified ; for Hidaspes, first making lowly 
obeisance to her father, and thanking him on bended 
knees for so great grace conferred upon her, — accord- 
ing to a plan preconcerted with Leucippus, — made suit 
as follows : — 

" Your loving care of me, O princely father ! by which 
in my tenderest age you made up to me for the loss of 
a mother at those years when I was scarcely able to 
comprehend the misfortune, and your bounties to me 
ever since, have left me nothing to ask for myself, as 
wanting and desiring nothing. But, for the people 
whom you govern, I beg and desire a boon. It is known 
to all nations, that the men of Lycia are noted for a 
vain and fruitless superstition, — the more hateful as it 
bears a show of true religion, but is indeed nothing 
more than a self-pleasing and bold wantonness. Many 
ages before this, when every man had taken to himself 
a trade, as hating idleness far worse than death, some 
one that gave himself to sloth and wine, finding him- 
self by his neighbors rebuked for his unprofitable life, 
framed to himself a god, whom he pretended to obey 
in his dishonesty; and, for a name, he called him 
Cupid. This god of merely man's creating — as the 
nature of man is ever credulous of any vice which takes 
part with his dissolute conditions — quickly found fol- 
lowers enough. They multiplied in every age, espe- 
cially among your Lycians, who to this day remain 
adorers of this drowsy deity, who certainly was first 
invented in drink, as sloth and luxury are commonly 
the first movers in these idle love-passions. This 
winged boy — for so they fancy him — has his sacri^ 



CUPID'S REVENGE. 351 

fices, his loose images set up in the land, through all 
the villages ; nay, your own sacred palace is not ex- 
empt from them, to the scandal of sound devotion, 
and dishonor of the true deities, which are only they 
who give good gifts to man, — as Ceres, who gives us 
corn ; the planter of the olive, Pallas ; Neptune, who 
directs the track of ships over the great ocean, and binds 
distant lands together in friendly commerce ; the inven- 
tor of medicine and music, Apollo ; and the cloud-com- 
pelling Thunderer of Olympus : whereas the gifts of 
this idle deity — if indeed he have a being at all out 
of the brain of his frantic worshippers — usually prove 
destructive and pernicious. My suit, then, is, that this 
unseemly idol throughout the land be plucked down, 
and cast into the fire ; and that the adoring of the same 
may be prohibited on pain of death to any of your sub- 
jects henceforth found so offending." 

Leontius, startled at this unexpected demand from 
the princess, with tears besought her to ask some wiser 
thing, and not to bring down upon herself and him the 
indignation of so great a god. 

" There is no such god as you dream of," said 
then Leucippus boldly, who had hitherto forborne to 
second the petition of the princess ; " but a vain opinion 
of him has filled the land with love and wantonness. 
Every young man and maiden, that feel the least desire 
to one another, dare in no case to suppress it ; for they 
think it to be Cupid's motion, and that he is a god ! " 

Thus pressed by the solicitations of both his children, 
and fearing the oath which he had taken, in an evil hour 
the misgiving father consented ; and a proclamation was 
sent throughout all the provinces for the putting-down 



352 CUPID'S REVENGE. 

of the idol, and suppression of the established Cupid- 
worship. 

Notable, you may be sure, was the stir made in all 
places among the priests, and among the artificers in 
gold, in silver, or in marble, who made a gainful trade, 
either in serving at the altar, or in the manufacture of 
the images no longer to be tolerated. The cry was 
clamorous as that at Ephesus when a kindred idol was 
in danger ; for "great had been Cupid of the Lycians." 
Nevertheless, the power of the duke, backed by the 
power of his more popular children, prevailed ; and 
the destruction of every vestage of the old religion was 
but as the work of one day throughout the country. 

And now, as the pagan chronicles of Lycia inform 
us, the displeasure of Cupid went out, — the displeas- 
ure of a great god, — flying through all the dukedom, 
and sowing evils. But, upon the first movers of the 
profanation, his angry hand lay heaviest ; and there was 
imposed upon them a strange misery, that all might 
know that Cupid's revenge was mighty. With his 
arrows hotter than plagues, or than his own anger, 
did he fiercely right himself; nor could the prayers of 
a few concealed worshippers, nor the smoke arising 
from an altar here and there which had escaped the gen- 
eral overthrow, avert his wrath, or make him to cease 
from vengeance, until he had made of the once-flourish- 
ing country of Lycia a most wretched land. He sent 
no famines, he let loose no cruel wild beasts among 
them, — inflictions with one or other of which the rest 
of the Olympian deities are fabled to have visited the 
nations under their displeasure, — but took a nearer 
course of his own ; and his invisible arrows went to the 



CUPID'S REVENGE. 353 

moral heart of Lycia, infecting and filling court and 
country with desires of unlawful marriages, unheard-of 
and monstrous affections, prodigious and misbecoming 
unions. 

The symptoms were first visible in the changed bosom 
of Hidaspes. This exemplary maiden, — whose cold 
modesty, almost to a failing, had discouraged the ad- 
dresses of so many princely suitors that had sought her 
hand in marriage, — by the venom of this inward pesti- 
lence, came on a sudden to cast eyes of affection upon a 
mean and deformed creature, Zoilus by name, who was 
a dwarf, and lived about the palace, the common jest 
of the courtiers. In her besotted eyes he was grown a 
goodly gentleman : and to her maidens, when any of 
them reproached him with the defect of his shape in her 
hearing, she would reply, that " to them, indeed, he 
might appear defective, and unlike a man, as, indeed, 
no man w T as like unto him ; for in form and complexion 
he was beyond painting. He is like," she said, " to 
nothing that we have seen ; yet he doth resemble Apol- 
lo, as I have fancied him, when, rising in the east, 
he bestirs himself, and shakes daylight from his hair." 
And, overcome with a passion which was heavier than 
she could bear, she confessed herself a wretched crea- 
ture, and implored forgiveness of God Cupid, whom she 
had provoked ; and, if possible, that he would grant it 
to her that she might enjoy her love. Nay, she would 
court this piece of deformity to his face ; and when 
the wretch, supposing it to be done in mockery, has 
said that he could wish himself more ill-shaped than he 
was, so it would contribute to make her grace merry, 
she would reply, " Oh ! think not that I jest ; unless it 

23 



354 CUPID'S REVENGE. 

be a jest not to esteem my life in comparison with thine ; 
to hang a thousand kisses in an hour upon those lips ; 
unless it be a jest to vow that I am willing to become 
your wife, and to take obedience upon me." And by 
his "own white hand," taking it in hers, — so strong was 
the delusion, — she besought him to swear to marry her. 

The term had not yet expired of the seven days with- 
in which the doting duke had sworn to fulfil her will, 
when, in pursuance of this frenzy, she presented herself 
before her father, leading in the dwarf by the hand, and, 
in the face of all the courtiers, solemnly demanding his 
hand in marriage. And, when the apish creature made 
show of blushing at the unmerited honor, she, to com- 
fort him, bade him not to be ashamed ; for, " in her 
eyes, he was worth a kingdom." 

And now, too late, did the fond father repent him of 
his dotage. But when by no importunity he could pre- 
vail upon her to desist from her suit, for his oath's sake 
he must needs consent to the marriage. But the cere- 
mony was no sooner, to the derision of all present, 
performed, than, with the just feelings of an outraged 
parent, he commanded the head of the presumptuous 
bridegroom to be stricken off, and committed the dis- 
tracted princess close prisoner to her chamber, where, 
after many deadly swoonings, with intermingled out- 
cries Upon the cruelty of her father, she, in no long 
time after, died ; making ineffectual appeals, to the last, 
to the mercy of the offended Power, — the Power that 
had laid its heavy hand upon her, to the bereavement of 
her good judgment first, and finally to the extinction 
of a life that might have proved a blessing to Lycia. 

Leontius had scarcely time to be sensible of her dan- 



CUPID'S REVENGE. 355 

ger before a fresh cause for mourning overtook him. 
His son Leucippus, who had hitherto been a pattern 
of strict life and modesty, was stricken with a second 
arrow from the deity, offended for his overturned al- 
tars, in which the prince had been a chief instrument. 
The god caused his heart to fall away, and his crazed 
fancy to be smitten with the excelling beauty of a 
wicked widow, by name Bacha. This woman, in the 
first days of her mourning for her husband, by her dis- 
sembling tears and affected coyness had drawn Leucip- 
pus so cunningly into her snares, that, before she would 
grant him a return of love, she extorted from the easy- 
hearted prince a contract of marriage, to be fulfilled 
in the event of his father's death. This guilty inter- 
course, which they covered with the name of marriage, 
was not carried with such secrecy but that a rumor of 
it ran about the palace, and by some officious courtier 
was brought to the ears of the old duke, who, to sat- 
isfy himself of the truth, came hastily to the house of 
Bacha, where he found his son courting. Taking the 
prince to task roundly, he sternly asked who that crea- 
ture was that had bewitched him out of his honor thus. 
Then Bacha, pretending ignorance of the duke's person, 
haughtily demanded of Leucippus what saucy old man 
that was, that without leave had burst into the house 
of an afflicted widow to hinder her paying her tears (as 
she pretended) to the dead. Then the duke declaring 
himself, and threatening her for having corrupted his 
son, giving her the reproachful terms of witch and sor- 
ceress, Leucippus mildly answered, that he " did her 
wrong." The bad woman, imagining that the prince 
for very fear would not betray their secret, now con- 



356 CUPID'S REVENGE. 

ceived a project of monstrous wickedness ; which was 
no less than to insnare the father with the same arts 
which had subdued the son, that she mi^ht no longer 
be a concealed wife, nor a princess only under cover, 
but, by a union with the old man, become at once the 
true and acknowledged Duchess of Lycia. In a pos- 
ture of humility, she confessed her ignorance of the 
duke's quality ; but, now she knew it, she besought his 
pardon for her wild speeches, which proceeded, she said, 
from a distempered head, which the loss of a dear hus- 
band had affected. He might command her life, she told 
him, which was now of small value to her. The tears 
which accompanied her words, and her mourning weeds 
(which, for a blind to the world, she had not yet cast off), 
heightening her beauty, gave a credence to her protes- 
tations of her innocence. But the duke continuing to 
assail her with reproaches, with a matchless confidence, 
assuming the air of injured virtue, in a somewhat lofty 
tone she replied, that though he were her sovereign, to 
whom in any lawful cause she was bound to submit, 
yet, if he sought to take away her honor, she stood up 
to defy him. That, she said, was a jewel dearer than 
any he could give her, which, so long as she should keep, 
she should esteem herself richer than all the princes of 
the earth that were without it. If the prince, his son, 
knew any thing to her dishonor, let him tell it. And 
here she challenged Leucippus before his father to speak 
the worst of her. If he would, however, sacrifice a 
woman's character to please an unjust humor of the 
duke's, she saw no remedy, she said, now he was dead 
(meaning her late husband) that with his life would have 
defended her reputation. 






CUPID'S REVENGE. 357 

Thus appeared to, Leucippus, who had stood a while 
astonished at her confident falsehoods, though ignorant 
of the full drift of them, considering that not the repu- 
tation only, but probably the life, of a woman whom he 
had so loved, and who had made such sacrifices to him 
of love and beauty, depended upon his absolute con- 
cealment of their contract, framed his mouth to a 
compassionate untruth, and with solemn asseverations 
confirmed to his father her assurances of her innocence. 
He denied not that with rich gifts he had assailed her 
virtue, but had found her relentless to his solicitations ; 
that gold nor greatness had any power over her. Nay, 
so far he went on to give force to the protestations of 
this artful woman, that he confessed to having offered 
marriage to her, which she, who scorned to listen to 
any second wedlock, had rejected. 

All this while, Leucippus secretly prayed to Heaven 
to forgive him while he uttered these bold untruths : 
since it was for the prevention of a greater mischief 
only, and had no malice in it. 

But, warned by the sad sequel which ensued, be thou 
careful, young reader, how in any case you tell a lie. 
Lie not, if any man but ask you " how you do," or 
" what o'clock it is." Be sure you make no false 
excuse to screen a friend that is most dear to you. 
Never let the most well-intended falsehood escape your 
lips ; for Heaven, which is entirely Truth, will make 
the seed which you have sown of untruth to yield mise- 
ries a thousand-fold upon yours, as it did upon the head 
of the ill-fated and mistaken Leucippus. 

Leontius, finding the assurances of Bacha so confi- 
dently seconded by his son, could no longer withhold 



358 CUPID'S REVENGE. 

his belief; and, only forbidding their meeting for the 
future, took a courteous leave of the lady, presenting 
her at the same time with a valuable ring, in recom- 
pense, as he said, of the injustice which he had done 
her in his false surmises of her guiltiness. In truth, 
the surpassing beauty of the lady, with her appearing 
modesty, had made no less impression upon the heart 
of the fond old duke than they had awakened in the 
bosom of his more pardonable son. His first design 
was to make her his mistress ; to the better accomplish- 
ing of which, Leucippus was dismissed from the court, 
under the pretext of some honorable employment abroad. 
In his absence, Leontius spared no offers to induce her 
to comply with his purpose. Continually he solicited 
her with rich offers, with messages, and by personal 
visits. It was a ridiculous sight, if it were not rather 
a sad one, to behold this second and worse dotage, 
which by Cupid's wrath had fallen upon this fantastical 
old new lover. All his occupation now was in dressing 
and pranking himself up in youthful attire to please the 
eyes of his new mistress. His mornings were employed 
in the devising of trim fashions, in the company of 
tailors, embroiderers, and feather-dressers. So infatu- 
ated was he with these vanities, that, when a servant 
came and told him that his daughter was dead, — even 
she whom he had but lately so highly prized, — the words 
seemed spoken to a deaf person. He either could not or 
would not understand them ; but, like one senseless, fell 
to babbling about the shape of a new hose and doublet. 
His crutch, the faithful prop of long aged years, was 
discarded ; and he resumed the youthful fashion of a 
sword by his side, when his years wanted strength to 



CUPID'S REVENGE. 3,59 

have drawn it. In this condition of folly, it was no 
difficult task for the widow, by affected pretences of 
honor, and arts of amorous denial, to draw in this dot- 
ing duke to that which she had all along aimed at, — the 
offer of his crown in marriage. She was now Duchess 
of Lycia ! In her new elevation, the mask was quickly 
thrown aside, and the impious Bacha appeared in her 
true qualities. She had never loved the duke, her hus- 
band ; but had used him as the instrument of her great- 
ness. Taking advantage of his amorous folly, which 
seemed to gain growth the nearer he approached to his 
grave, she took upon her the whole rule of Lycia; 
placing and displacing, at her will, all the great officers 
of state ; and filling the court with creatures of her 
own, the agents of her guilty pleasures, she removed 
from the duke's person the oldest and trustiest of his 
dependants. 

Leucippus, who at this juncture was returned from 
his foreign mission, was met at once with the news of 
his sister's death and the' strange wedlock of the old 
duke. To the memory of Hidaspes he gave some tears ; 
but these were swiftly swallowed up in his horror and 
detestation of the conduct of Bacha. In his first fury, 
he resolved upon a full disclosure of all that had passed 
between him and his wicked step-mother. Again, he 
thought, by killing Bacha, to rid the world of a mon- 
ster. But tenderness for his father recalled him to 
milder counsels. The fatal secret, nevertheless, sat upon 
him like lead, while he was determined to confide it to 
no other. It took his sleep away, and his desire of 
food ; and, if a thought of mirth at any time crossed 
him, the dreadful truth would recur to check it, as if a 



360 CUPID'S REVENGE. 

messenger should have come to whisper to him of some 
friend's death. With difficulty he was brought to wish 
their highnesses faint joy of their marriage ; and, at 
the first sight of Bacha, a friend was fain to hold his 
wrist hard to prevent him from fainting. In an inter- 
view, which after, at her request, he had with her alone, 
the bad woman shamed not to take up the subject light- 
ly ; to treat as a trifle the marriage vow that had passed 
between them ; and, seeing him sad and silent, to 
threaten him with the displeasure of the duke, his 
father, if by words or looks he gave any suspicion to 
the world of their dangerous secret. " What had hap- 
pened," she said, " was by no fault of hers. People 
would have thought her mad if she had refused the 
duke's offer. She had used no arts to entrap his father. 
It was Leucippus' own resolute denial of any such thing 
as a contract having passed between them which had 
led to the proposal." 

The prince, unable to extenuate his share of blame 
in the calamity, humbly besought her, that " since, by 
his own great fault, things had been brought to their 
present pass, she would only live honest for the future, 
and not abuse the credulous age of the old duke, as 
he well knew she had the power to do. For him- 
self, seeing that life was no longer desirable to him, if 
his death was judged by her to be indispensable to her 
security, she was welcome to lay what trains she pleased 
to compass it, so long as she would only suffer his 
father to go to his grave in peace, since he had never 
wronged her." 

This temperate appeal was lost upon the heart of 
Bacha, who from that moment was secretly bent upon 



CUPID'S REVENGE. 361 

effecting the destruction of Leucippus. Her project 
was, by feeding the ears of the duke with exaggerated 
praises of his son, to awaken a jealousy in the old man, 
that she secretly preferred Leucippus. Next, by wilful- 
ly insinuating the great popularity of the prince (which 
was no more indeed than the truth) among the Lycians, 
to instil subtle fears into the duke that his son had laid 
plots for circumventing his life and throne. By these 
arts she was working upon the weak mind of the duke 
almost to distraction, when, at a meeting concocted by 
herself between the prince and his father, the latter 
taking Leucippus soundly to task for these alleged trea- 
sons, the prince replied only by humbly drawing his 
sword, with the intention of laying it at his father's feet ; 
an<l begging him, since he suspected him, to sheathe it 
in his own bosom, for of his life he had been long weary. 
Bacha entered at the crisis, and, ere Leucippus could 
finish his submission, with loud outcries alarmed the 
courtiers, who, rushing into the presence, found the 
prince with sword in hand indeed, but with far other 
intentions than this bad woman imputed to him, plain- 
ly accusing him of having drawn it upon his father ! 
Leucippus was quickly disarmed ; and the old duke, 
trembling between fear and age, committed him to close 
prison, from which, by Bacha's aims, he never should 
have come out alive but for the interference of the 
common people, who, loving their prince, and equally 
detesting Bacha, in a simultaneous mutiny arose, and 
rescued him from the hands of the officers. 

The court was now no longer a place of living for 
Leucippus ; and hastily thanking his countrymen for his 
deliverance, which in his heart he rather deprecated 



362 CUPID'S REVENGE. 

than welcomed, as one that wished for death, he took 
leave of all court hopes, and, abandoning the palace, 
betook himself to a life of penitence in solitudes. 

Not so secretly did he select his place of penance, in 
a cave among lonely woods and fastnesses, but that his 
retreat was traced by Bacha ; who, baffled in her pur- 
pose, raging like some she-wolf, despatched an emissary 
of her own to destroy him privately. 

There was residing at the court of Lycia, at this 
time, a young maiden, the daughter of Bacha by her 
first husband, who had hitherto been brought up in the 
obscurity of a poor country abode with an uncle ; but 
whom Bacha now publicly owned, and had prevailed 
upon the easy duke to adopt as successor to the throne 
in wrong of the true heir, his suspected son Leucippus. 

This young creature, Urania by name, was as artless 
and harmless as her mother was crafty and wicked. 
To the unnatural Bacha she had been an object of neg- 
lect and aversion ; and for the project of supplanting 
Leucippus only had she fetched her out of retirement. 
The bringing-up of Urania had been among country 
hinds and lasses : to tend her flocks or superintend her 
neat dairy had been the extent of her breeding. From 
her calling, she had contracted a pretty rusticity of dia- 
lect, which, among the fine folks of the court, passed for 
simplicity and folly. She was the unfittest instrument 
for an ambitious design that could be chosen ; for her 
manners in a palace had a tinge still of her old occu- 
pation ; and, to her mind, the lowly shepherdess's life 
was best. 

Simplicity is oft a match for prudence : and Urania 
was not so simple but she understood that she had been 



CUPID'S REVENGE. 363 

sent for to court only in the prince's wrong ; and in her 
heart she was determined to defeat any designs that 
might be contriving against her brother-in-law. The 
melancholy bearing of Leucippus had touched her with 
pity. This wrought in her a kind of love, which, for 
its object, had no further end than the well-being of the 
beloved. She looked for no return of it, nor did 
the possibility of such a blessing in the remotest way 
occur to her, — so vast a distance she had imaged be- 
tween her lowly bringing-up and the courtly breeding 
and graces of Leucippus. Hers was no raging flame, 
such as had burned destructive in the bosom of poor 
Hidaspes. Either the vindictive god in mercy had 
spared this young maiden, or the wrath of the con- 
founding Cupid was restrained by a higher Power from 
discharging the most malignant of his arrows against 
the peace of so much innocence. Of the extent of her 
mother's malice she was too guileless to have entertained 
conjecture ; but from hints and whispers, and, above 
all, from that tender watchfulness with which a true 
affection like Urania's tends the safety of its object, — 
fearing even where no cause for fear subsists, — she 
gathered that some danger was impending over the 
prince, and with simple heroism resolved to counter- 
mine the treason. 

It chanced upon a day that Leucippus had been 
indulging his sad meditations in forests far from 
human converse, when he was struck with the ap- 
pearance of a human being, so unusual in that solitude. 
There stood before him a seeming youth, of delicate 
appearance, clad in coarse and peasantly attire. " He 
was come," he said, " to seek out the prince, and to be 



364 CUPID'S REVENGE. 

his poor boy and servant, if he would let him."— "Alas ! 
poor youth," replied Leucippus : " why do you follow 
me, who am as poor as you are?" — "In good faith," 
was his pretty answer, " I shall be well and rich enough 
if you will but love me." And, saying so, he wept. 
The prince, admiring this strange attachment in a boy, 
was moved with compassion ; and seeing him exhausted, 
as if with long travel and hunger, invited him in to his 
poor habitation, setting such refreshments before him as 
that barren spot afforded. But by no entreaties could he 
be prevailed upon to take any sustenance ; and all that 
day, and for the two following, he seemed supported 
only by some gentle flame of love that was within him. 
He fed only upon the sweet looks and courteous enter- 
tainment which he received from Leucippus. Seeming- 
ly, he wished to die under the loving eyes of his master. 
" I cannot eat," he prettily said ; " but I shall eat to- 
morrow." — "You will be dead by that time," replied 
Leucippus. " I shall be well then," said he ; " since 
you will not love me." Then the prince asking him 
why he sighed so, " To think," was his innocent reply, 
" that such a fine man as you should die, and no gay 
lady love him." — " But you will love me," said Leucip- 
pus. " Yes, sure," said he, " till I die ; and, when I am 
in heaven, I shall wish for you." " This is a love," 
thought the other, " that I never yet heard tell of. But 
come, thou art sleepy, child : go in, and I will sit with 
thee." Then, from some words which the poor youth 
dropped, Leucippus, suspecting that his wits were be- 
ginning to ramble, said, " What portends this ? " — "I 
am not sleepy," said the youth ; " but you are sad. 
I would that I could do any thing to make you merry ! 



CUPID'S REVENGE. 365 

Shall I sing?" But soon, as if recovering strength, 
" There is one approaching ! " he wildly cried out. 
"Master, look to yourself!" 

His words were true : for now entered, with provided 
weapon, the wicked emissary of Bacha, that we told of; 
and, directing a mortal thrust at the prince, the supposed 
boy, with a last effort, interposing his weak body, re- 
ceived it in his bosom, thanking the heavens in death 
that he he had saved " so good a master." 

Leucippus, having slain the villain, was at leisure to 
discover, in the features of his poor servant, the coun- 
tenance of his devoted sister-in-law ! Through solitary 
and dangerous ways she had sought him in that dis- 
guise ; and, finding him, seems to have resolved upon a 
voluntary death by fasting, — partly that she might die 
in the presence of her beloved, and partly that she 
might make known to him in death the love which she 
wanted boldness to disclose to him while living, but 
chiefly because she knew, that, by her demise, all obsta- 
cles would be removed that stood between her prince 
and his succession to the throne of Lycia. 

Leucippus had hardly time to comprehend the 
strength of love in his Urania, when a trampling of 
horses resounded through his solitude. It was a party 
of Lycian horsemen, that had come to seek him, drag- 
ging the detested Bacha in their train, who was now to 
receive the full penalty of her misdeeds. Amidst her 
frantic fury upon the missing of her daughter, the old 
duke had suddenly died, not without suspicion of her 
having administered poison to him. Her punishment 
was submitted to Leucippus, who was now, with joyful 
acclaims, saluted as the rightful Duke of Lycia. He, 



366 CUPID'S REVENGE. 

as no way moved with his great wrongs, but consider- 
ing her simply as the parent of Urania, saluting her 
only by the title of " Wicked Mother," bade her to live. 
" That reverend title," he said, and pointed to the 
bleeding remains of her child, " must be her pardon. 
He would use no extremity against her, but leave her 
to Heaven." The hardened mother, not at all relenting 
at the sad spectacle that lay before her, but making 
show of dutiful submission to the young duke, and with 
bended knees approaching him, suddenly with a dag- 
ger inflicted a mortal stab upon him ; and, with a 
second stroke stabbing herself, ended both their wretch- 
ed lives. 

Now was the tragedy of Cupid's wrath awfully com- 
pleted ; and, the race of Leontius failing in the deaths 
of both his children, the chronicle relates, that under 
their new duke, Ismenus, the offence to the angry 
Power was expiated ; his statues and altars were, with 
more magnificence than ever, re-edified ; and he ceased 
thenceforth from plaguing the land. 

Thus far the pagan historians relate erring. But 
from this vain idol story a not unprofitable moral may 
be gathered against the abuse of the natural but dan- 
gerous passion of love. In the story of Hidaspes, we 
see the preposterous linking of beauty with deformity ; 
of princely expectancies with mean and low conditions, 
in the case of the prince, her brother; and of decrepit 
age with youth, in the ill end of their doting father, 
Leontius. By their examples we are warned to decline 
all unequal and ill-assorted unions. 



THE DEFEAT OF TIME. 367 



THE DEFEAT OF TIME; 

OR, A TALE OF THE FAIRIES.* 

Titanta and her moonlight elves were assembled under 
the canopy of a huge oak, that served to shelter *- them 
from the moon's radiance, which, being now at her full 
noon, shot forth intolerable rays, — intolerable, I mean, 
to the subtile texture of their little shadowy bodies, — 
but dispensing an agreeable coolness to us grosser mor- 
tals. An air of discomfort sate upon the queen and 
upon her" courtiers. Their tiny friskings and gambols 
were forgot ; and even Robin Goodfellow, for the first 
time in his little airy life, looked grave. For the queen 
had had melancholy forebodings of late, founded upon an 
ancient prophecy laid up in the records of Fairyland, 
that the date of fairy existence should be then extinct 
when men should cease to believe in them. And she 
knew how that the race of the Nymphs, which were her 
predecessors, and had been the guardians of the sacred 
floods, and of the silver fountains, and of the consecrat- 
ed hills and woods, had utterly disappeared before the 
chilling touch of man's incredulity ; and she sighed bit- 
terly at the approaching fate of herself and of her sub- 
jects, which was dependent upon so fickle a lease as the 
capricious and ever mutable faith of man. When, as 
if to realize her fears, a melancholy shape came gliding 
in, and that was — Time, who with his intolerable scythe 

* From Hone's " Table-book." 



368 THE DEFEAT OF TIME; 

mows down kings and kingdoms ; at whose dread ap- 
proach the fays huddled together as a flock of timorous 
sheep ; and the most courageous among them crept into 
acorn-cups, not enduring the sight of that ancientest of 
monarchs. Titania's first impulse was to wish the pres- 
ence of her false lord, King Oberon, — who was far 
away, in the pursuit of a strange beauty, a fay of In- 
dian Land, — that with his good lance and sword, like 
a faithful knight and husband, he might defend her 
against Time. But she soon checked that thought as 
vain ; for what could the prowess of the mighty Oberon 
himself, albeit the stoutest champion in Fairyland, have 
availed against so huge a giant, whose bald top touched 
the skies? So, in the mildest tone, she besought the 
spectre, that in his mercy he would overlook' and pass 
by her small subjects, as too diminutive and powerless 
to add any worthy trophy to his renown. And she be- 
sought him to employ his resistless strength against the 
ambitious children of men, and to lay waste their 
aspiring works ; to tumble down their towers and tur- 
rets, and the Babels of their pride, — fit objects of his 
devouring scythe, — but to spare her and her harmless 
race, who had no existence beyond a dream ; frail objects 
of a creed that lived but in the faith of the believer. 
And with her little arms, as well as she could, she 
grasped the stern knees of Time ; and, waxing speech- 
less with fear, she beckoned to her chief attendants, and 
maids of honor, to come forth from their hiding-places, 
and to plead the plea of the fairies. And one of those 
small, delicate creatures came forth at her bidding, clad 
all in white like a chorister ; and in a low, melodious 
tone, not louder than the hum of a pretty bee, — when it 



OR, A TALE OF THE FAIRIES. 369 

seems to be demurring whether it shall settle upon this 
sweet flower or that before it settles, — set forth her 
humble petition. "We fairies," she said, "are the most 
inoffensive race that live, and least deserving to perish. 
It is we that have the care of all sweet melodies, that 
no discords may offend the sun, who is the great soul of 
music. We rouse the lark at morn ; and the pretty 
Echoes, which respond to all the twittering choir, are of 
our making. Wherefore, great King of Years, as ever 
you have loved the music which is raining from a morn- 
ing cloud sent from the messenger of day, the lark, as 
he mounts to heaven's gate, beyond the ken of mortals ; 
or if ever you have listened with a charmed ear to the 
night-bird, that — 

' In the flowery spring, 
Amidst the leaves set, makes the thickets ring 
Of her sour sorrows, sweetened with her song,' — 

spare our tender tribes, and we will muffle up the 
sheep-bell for thee, that thy pleasure take no interrup- 
tion whenever thou shalt listen unto Philomel." 

And Time answered, that " he had heard that song 
too long ; and he was even wearied with that ancient 
strain that recorded the wrong of Tereus. But, if she 
would know in what music Time delighted, it was, when 
sleep and darkness lay upon crowded cities, to hark to 
the midnight chime which is tolling from a hundred 
clocks, like the last knell over the soul of a dead 
world ; or to the crush of the fall of some age-worn edi- 
fice, which is as the voice of himself when he disparteth 
kingdoms." 

A second female fay took up the plea, and said, " We 
be the handmaids of the Spring, and tend upon the birth 

24 



370 THE DEFEAT OF TIME; 

of all sweet buds : and the pastoral cowslips are our 
friends ; and the pansies ; and the violets, like nuns ; 
and the quaking harebell is in our wardship ; and the 
hyacinth, once a fair youth, and dear to Phoebus." 

Then Time made answer, in his wrath striking the 
harmless ground with his hurtful scythe, that "they 
must not think that he was one that cared for flowers, 
except to see them wither, and to take her beauty from 
the rose." 

And a third fairy took up the plea, and said, " We 
are kindly things ; and it is we that sit at evening, and 
shake rich odors from sweet bowers upon discoursing 
lovers, that seem to each other to be their own sighs ; 
and we keep off the bat and the owl from their privacy, 
and the ill-boding whistler ; and we flit in sweet dreams 
across the brains of infancy, and conjure up a smile upon 
its soft lips to beguile the careful mother, while its lit- 
tle soul is fled for a brief minute or two to sport with 
our youngest fairies." 

Then Saturn (which is Time) made answer, that 
"they should not think that he delighted in tender 
babes, that had devoured his own, till foolish Rhea 
cheated him with a stone, which he swallowed, thinking 
it to be the infant Jupiter." And thereat, in token, he 
disclosed to view his enormous tooth, in which appeared 
monstrous dints left by that unnatural meal ; and his 
great throat, that seemed capable of devouring up the 
earth and all its inhabitants at one meal. "And for 
lovers," he continued, "my delight is, with a hurrying 
hand to snatch them away from their love-meetings 
by stealth at nights ; and, in absence, to stand like a 
motionless statue, or their leaden planet of mishap 



OR, A TALE OF THE FAIRIES. 371 

(whence I had my name), till I make their minutes 
seem ages." 

Next stood up a male fairy, clad all in green, like a 
forester or one of Robin Hood's mates, and, doffing his 
tiny cap, said, "We are small foresters, that live in 
woods, training the young boughs in graceful intricacies, 
with blue snatches of the sky between : we frame all 
shady roofs and arches rude ; and sometimes, when we 
are plying our tender hatchets, men say that the tap- 
ping woodpecker is nigh. And it is we that scoop the 
hollow cell of the squirrel, and carve quaint letters upon 
the rinds of trees, which, in sylvan solitudes, sweetly 
recall to the mind of the heat-oppressed swain, ere he 
lies down to slumber, the name of his fair one, dainty 
Aminta, gentle Rosalind, or chastest Laura, as it may 
happen." 

Saturn, nothing moved with this courteous address, 
bade him be gone, or, " if he would be a woodman, to 
go forth and fell oak for the fairies' coffins which would 
forthwith be wanting. For himself, he took no delight 
in haunting the woods, till their golden plumage (the 
yellow leaves) were beginning to fall, and leave the 
brown-black limbs bare, like Nature in her skeleton 
dress." 

Then stood up one of those gentle fairies that are 
good to man, and blushed red as any rose while he told 
a modest story of one of his own good deeds. "It 
chanced upon a time," he said, " that while we were 
looking cowslips in the meads, while yet the dew was 
hanging on the buds like beads, we found a babe left in 
its swathing-clothes, — a little sorrowful, deserted thing, 
begot of love, but begetting no love in others ; guiltless 



372 THE DEFEAT OF TIME; 

of shame, but doomed to shame for its parents' offence 
in bringing it by indirect courses into the world. It 
was pity to see the abandoned little orphan left to the 
world's care by an unnatural mother. How the cold dew 
kept wetting its childish coats ! and its little hair, how 
it was bedabbled, that was like gossamer ! Its pouting 
mouth, unknowing how to speak, lay half opened like 
a rose-lipped shell ; and its cheek was softer than any 
peach, upon which the tears, for very roundness, could 
not long dwell, but fell off, in clearness like pearls, — 
some on the grass, and some on his little hand; and 
some haply wandered to the little dimpled well under 
his mouth, which Love himself seemed to have planned 
out, but less for tears than for smilings. Pity it was, 
too, to see how the burning sun had scorched its help- 
less limbs ; for it lay without shade or shelter, or 
mother's breast, for foul weather or fair. So, having 
compassion on its sad plight, my fellows and I turned 
ourselves into grasshoppers, and swarmed about the 
babe, making such shrill cries as that pretty little chirp- 
ing creature makes in its mirth, till with our noise we 
attracted the attention of a passing rustic, a tender- 
hearted hind, who, wondering at our small but loud con- 
cert, strayed aside curiously, and found the babe, where 
it lay in the remote grass, and, taking it up, lapped 
it in his russet coat, and bore it to his cottage, where 
his wife kindly nurtured it till it grew up a goodly 
personage. How this babe prospered afterwards, let 
proud London tell. This was that famous Sir Thomas 
Gresham, who was the chiefest of her merchants, the 
richest, the wisest. Witness his many goodly vessels 
on the Thames, freighted with costly merchandise, jew- 



OR, A TALE OF THE FAIRIES. 373 

els from Ind, and pearls for courtly dames, and silks of 
Samarcand. And witness, more than all, that stately 
Bourse (or Exchange) which he caused to be built, a 
mart for merchants from east and west, whose graceful 
summit still bears, in token of the fairies' favors, his 
chosen crest, the grasshopper. And, like the grasshop- 
per, may it please you, great king, to suffer us also to 
live, partakers of the green earth !" 

The fairy had scarce ended his plea, when a shrill cry, 
not unlike the grasshopper's, was heard. Poor Puck — 
or Robin Goodfellow, as he is sometimes called — had 
recovered a little from his first fright, and, in one of his 
mad freaks, had perched upon the beard of old Time, 
which was flowing, ample, and majestic ; and was amus- 
ing himself with plucking at a hair which was indeed so 
massy, that it seemed to him that he was removing some 
huge beam of timber, rather than a hair ; which Time 
by some ill chance perceiving, snatched up the impish 
mischief with his great hand, and asked what it was. 

" Alas ! " quoth Puck, " a little random elf am I, born 
in one of Nature's sports ; a very weed, created for the 
simple, sweet enjoyment of myself, but for no other 
purpose, worth, or need, that ever I could learn. 'Tis 
I that bob the angler's idle cork, till the patient man is 
ready to breathe a curse. I steal the morsel from the 
gossip's fork, or stop the sneezing chanter in mid psalm ; 
and, when an infant has been born with hard or homely 
features, mothers say I changed the child at nurse : but 
to fulfil any graver purpose I have not wit enough, and 
hardly the will. I am a pinch of lively dust to frisk 
upon the wind : a tear would make a puddle of me ; 
and so I tickle myself with the lightest straw, and shun 



374 THE DEFEAT OF TIME. 

all griefs that might make me stagnant. This is my 
small philosophy." 

Then Time, dropping him on the ground, as a thing 
too inconsiderable for his vengeance, grasped fast his 
mighty scythe : and now, not Puck alone, but the whole 
state of fairies, had gone to inevitable wreck and destruc- 
tion, had not a timely apparition interposed, at whose 
boldness Time was astounded ; for he came not with the 
habit or the forces of a deity, who alone might cope 
with Time, but as a simple mortal, clad as you might 
see a forester that hunts after wild conies by the cold 
moonshine ; or a stalker of stray deer, stealthy and bold. 
But by the golden lustre in his eye, and the passionate 
wanness in his cheek, and by the fair and ample space 
of his forehead, which seemed a palace framed for the 
habitation of all glorious thoughts, he knew that this was 
his great rival, who had power given him to rescue what- 
soever victims Time should clutch, and to cause them to 
live for ever in his immortal verse. And, muttering the 
name of Shakspeare, Time spread his roc-like wings, 
and fled the controlling presence ; and the liberated 
court of the fairies, with Titania at their head, flocked 
around the gentle ghost, giving him thanks, nodding to 
him, and doing him courtesies, who had crowned them 
henceforth with a permanent existence, to live in the 
minds of men, while verse shall have power to charm, 
or midsummer moons shall brighten. 

What particular endearments passed between the fai- 
ries and their poet, passes my pencil to delineate ; but, 
if you are curious to be informed, I must refer you, 
gentle reader, to the " Plea of the Midsummer Fairies," 



MAKIA HOWE. 375 

a most agreeable poem lately put forth by my friend 
Thomas Hood ; of the first half of which the above is 
nothing but a meagre and a harsh prose abstract. 
Farewell ! 

Tfie vjords of Mercury are harsh after the songs of 
Apollo. 



MARIA HOWE; 

OR, THE EFFECT OF WITCH-STORIES.* 

I WAS brought up in the country. From my infancy I 
was always a weak and tender-spirited girl, subject to 
fears and depressions. My parents, and particularly 
my mother, were of a very different disposition. They 
were what is usually called gay. They loved pleasure 
and parties and visiting ; but, as they found the turn of 
my mind to be quite opposite, they gave themselves 
little trouble about me, but upon such occasions gener- 
ally left me to my choice, which was much oftener to 
stay at home, and indulge myself in my solitude, than 
to join in their rambling visits. I was always fond of 
being alone, yet always in a manner afraid. There 
was a book-closet which led into my mother's dressing- 
room. Here I was extremely fond of being shut up 
by myself, to take down whatever volumes I pleased, 
and pore upon them, — no matter whether they were 
fit for my years or no, or whether I understood them. 

* This and the two following juvenile stories are from " Mrs. Leicester's 
School." — Editor. 



376 MARIA HOWE; 

Here, when the weather would not permit my going 
into the dark walk (my walk, as it was called) in the 
garden, — here, when my parents have been from home, 
I have staid for hours together, till the loneliness, 
which pleased me so at first, has at length become quite 
frightful, and I have rushed out of the closet into the 
inhabited parts of the house, and sought refuge in the 
lap of some one of the female servants, or of my aunt, 
who would say, seeing me look pale, that Maria had 
been frightening herself with some of those nasty books : 
so she used to call my favorite volumes, which I would 
not have parted with, no, not with one of the least of 
them, if I had had the choice to be made a fine princess, 
and to govern the world. But my aunt was no reader. 
She used to excuse herself, and say that reading hurt 
her eyes. I have been naughty enough to think that 
this was only an excuse ; for I found that my aunt's 
weak eyes did not prevent her from poring ten hours a 
day upon her Prayer-book, or her favorite Thomas a 
Kempis. But this was always her excuse for not read- 
ing any of the books I recommended. My aunt was 
my father's sister. She had never been married. My 
father was a good deal older than my mother, and my 
aunt was ten years older than my father. As I was 
often left at home with her, and as my serious disposi- 
tion so well agreed with hers, an intimacy grew up 
between the old lady and me ; and she would often say 
that she loved only one person in the world, and that 
was me. Not that she and my parents were on very 
bad terms ; but the old lady did not feel herself respected 
enough. The attention and fondness which she showed 
to me, conscious as I was that I was almost the only 



OR, THE EFFECT OF WITCH-STORIES. 377 

being she felt any thing like fondness to, made me love 
her, as it was natural : indeed, I am ashamed to say, 
that I fear I almost loved her better than both my par- 
ents put together. But there was an oddness, a silence, 
about my aunt, which was never interrupted but by her 
occasional expressions of love to me, that made me stand 
in fear of her. An odd look from under her spectacles 
would sometimes scare me away, when I had been peer- 
ing up in her face to make her kiss me. Then she had 
a way of muttering to herself, which, though it was 
good words and religious words that she was mumbling, 
somehow I did not like. My weak spirits, and the 
fears I was subject to, always made me afraid of any 
personal singularity or oddness in any one. I am 
ashamed, ladies, to lay open so many particulars of our 
family ; but indeed it is necessary to the understanding 
of what I am going to tell you of a very great weakness, 
if not wickedness, which I was guilty of towards my 
aunt. But I must return to my studies, and tell you 
what books I found in the closet, and what reading I 
chiefly admired. There was a great " Book of Martyrs," 
in which I used to read, or rather I used to spell out 
meanings ; for I was too ignorant to make out many 
words : but there it was written all about those good 
men who chose to be burned alive, rather than forsake 
their religion, and become naughty Papists. Some 
words I could make out, some I could not : but I made 
out enough to fill my little head with vanity ; and I used 
to think I was so courageous I could be burned too ; 
and I would put my hands upon the flames which were 
pictured in the pretty pictures which the book had, 
and feel them. But you know, ladies, there is a great 



378 MARIA HOWE; 

difference between the flames in a picture, and real fire ; 
and I am now ashamed of the conceit which I had of 
my own courage, and think how poor a martyr I should 
have made in those days. Then there was a book not 
so big, but it had pictures in. It was called Culpepper's 
"Herbal." It was full of pictures of plants and herbs ; but 
I did not much care for that. Then there was Salmon's 
" Modern History," out of which I picked a good deal. 
It had pictures of Chinese gods, and the great hooded 
serpent, which ran strangely in my fancy. There were 
some law-books too ; but the old English frightened me 
from reading them. But, above all, what I relished 
was Stackhouse's "History of the Bible," where there 
was the picture of the ark, and all the beasts getting 
into it. This delighted me, because it puzzled me : 
and many an aching head have I got with poring into 
it, and contriving how it might be built, with such and 
such rooms, to hold all the world, if there should be an- 
other flood ; and sometimes settling what pretty beasts 
should be saved, and what should not ; for I would have 
no ugly or deformed beast in my pretty ark. But this 
was only a piece of folly and vanity, that a little reflec- 
tion might cure me of. Foolish girl that I was, to 
suppose that any creature is really ugly, that has all its 
limbs contrived with heavenly wisdom, and was doubt- 
less formed to some beautiful end ! — though a child 
cannot comprehend it. Doubtless a frog or a toad is 
not uglier in itself than a squirrel or a pretty green 
lizard ; but we want understanding to see it. 

These fancies, ladies, were not so very foolish or 
naughty, perhaps, but they may be forgiven in a child 
of six years old ; but what I am going to tell, I shall 



OR, THE EFFECT OF WITCH-STORIES. 379 

be ashamed of, and repent, I hope, as long as I live. 
It will teach me not to form rash judgments. Besides 
the picture of the ark, and many others which I have 
forgot, Stackhouse contained one picture which made 
more impression upon my childish understanding than 
all the rest: it was the picture of the raising -up of 
Samuel, which I used to call the Witch-of-Endor pic- 
ture. I was always very fond of picking up stories 
about witches. There was a book called " Glanvil on 
Witches," which used to lie about in this closet : it was 
thumbed about, and showed it had been much read in 
former times. This was my treasure. Here I used to 
pick out the strangest stories. My not being able to 
read them very well, probably made them appear more 
strange and out of the way to me. But I could collect 
enough to understand that witches were old women, 
who gave themselves up to do mischief; how, by the 
help of spirits as bad as themselves, they lamed cattle, 
and made the corn not grow ; . and how they made 
images of wax to stand for people that had done them 
any injury, or they thought had done them injury ; 
and how they burned the images before a slow fire, 
and stuck pins in them ; and the persons which these 
waxen images represented, however far distant, felt 
all the pains and torments in good earnest which were 
inflicted in show upon these images : and such a hor- 
ror I had of these wicked witches, that though I am 
now better instructed, and look upon all these stories as 
mere idle tales, and invented to fill people's heads with 
nonsense, yet I cannot recall to mind the horrors which 
I then felt, without shuddering, and feeling something 
of the old fit return. 



380 MARIA HOWE ; 

This foolish book of witch-stories had no pictures in 
it ; but I made up for them out of my own fancy, and 
out of the great picture of the raising-up of Samuel, in 
Stackhouse. I was not old enough to understand the 
difference there was between these silly, improbable 
tales, which imputed such powers to poor old women, 
who are the most helpless things in the creation, and 
the narrative in the Bible, which does not say that the 
witch, or pretended witch, raised up the dead body of 
Samuel by her own power, but, as it clearly appears, 
he was permitted by the divine will to appear, to 
confound the presumption of Saul ; and that the witch 
herself was really as much frightened and confounded 
at the miracle as Saul himself, not expecting a real ap- 
pearance, but probably having prepared some juggling, 
sleight-of-hand tricks, and sham appearance, to deceive 
the eyes of Saul ; whereas neither she, nor any one 
living, had ever the power to raise the dead to life, but 
only He who made them from the first. These reasons 
I might have read in Stackhouse itself, if I had been 
old enough, and have read them in that very book since 
I was older ; but, at that time, I looked at little beyond 
the picture. 

These stories of witches so terrified me, that my 
sleeps were broken ; and, in my dreams, I always had 
a fancy of a witch being in the room with me. I know 
now that it was only nervousness ; but though I can 
laugh at it now as well as you, ladies, if you knew 
what I suffered, you would be thankful that you have 
had sensible people about you to instruct you, and teach 
you better. I was let grow up wild, like an ill weed ; 
and thrived accordingly. One night, that I had been 



i 



OE, THE EFFECT OF WITCH-STORIES. 381 

terrified in my sleep with my imaginations, I got out of 
bed, and crept softly to the adjoining room. My room 
was next to where my aunt usually sat when she was 
alone. Into her room I crept for relief from my fears. 
The old lady was not yet retired to rest, but was sitting 
with her eyes half open, half closed ; her spectacles tot- 
tering upon her nose ; her head nodding over her Prayer- 
book ; her lips mumbling the words as she read them, 
or half read them, in her dozing posture ; her grotesque 
appearance, her old-fashioned dress, resembling what I 
had seen in that fatal picture in Stackhouse. All this, 
with the dead time of night, as it seemed to me (for I 
had gone through my first sleep) , joined to produce a 
wicked fancy in me, that the form which I had beheld 
was not my aunt, but some witch. Her mumbling of 
her prayers confirmed me in this shocking idea. I had 
read in Glanvil of those wicked creatures reading their 
prayers backwards; and I thought that this was the 
operation which her lips were at this time employed 
about. Instead of flying to her friendly lap for that 
protection which I had so often experienced when I have 
been weak and timid, I shrunk back, terrified and be- 
wildered, to my bed, where I lay, in broken sleeps and 
miserable fancies, till the morning, which I had so much 
reason to wish for, came. My fancies a little wore 
away with the light ; but an impression was fixed, which 
could not for a long time be done away. In the day- 
time, when my father and mother were about the house, 
when I saw them familiarly speak to my aunt, my fears 
all vanished ; and when the good creature has taken me 
upon her knees, and shown me any kindness more than 
ordinary, at such times I have melted into tears, and 



382 MARIA HOWE; 

longed to tell her what naughty, foolish fancies I had 
had of her. But, when night returned, that figure 
which I had seen recurred, — the posture, the half-closed 
eyes, the mumbling and muttering which I had heard. 
A confusion was in my head, who it was I had seen 
that night : it was my aunt, and it was not my aunt ; it 
was that good creature, who loved me above all the 
world, engaged at her good task of devotions, — perhaps 
praying for some good to me. Again, it was a witch, 
a creature hateful to God and man, reading backwards 
the good prayers ; who would perhaps destroy me. In 
these conflicts of mind I passed several weeks, till, by a 
revolution in my fate, I was removed to the house of a 
female relation of my mother's in a distant part of the 
country, who had come on a visit to our house, and 
observing my lonely ways, and apprehensive of the ill 
effect of my mode of living upon my health, begged 
leave to take me home to her house to reside for a short 
time. I went, with some reluctance at leaving my 
closet, my dark walk, and even my aunt, who had been 
such a source of both love and terror to me. But I 
went, and soon found the grand effects of a change of 
scene. Instead of melancholy closets and lonely ave- 
nues of trees, I saw lightsome rooms and cheerful faces. 
I had companions of my own age. No books were 
allowed me but what were rational and sprightly, — that 
gave me mirth, or gave me instruction. I soon learned 
to laugh at witch-stories ; and when I returned, after 
three or four months' absence, to our own house, my 
good aunt appeared to me in the same light in which I 
had viewed her from my infancy, before that foolish 
fancy possessed me ; or rather, I should say, more kind, 



OR, THE EFFECT OF WITCH-STORIES. 383 

more fond, more loving than before. It is impossible 
to say how much good that lady (the kind relation of 
my mother's that I spoke of) did to me by changing 
the scene. Quite a new turn of ideas was given to me. 
I became sociable and companionable. My parents soon 
discovered a change in me ; and I have found a similar 
alteration in them. They have been plainly more fond 
of me since that change, as from that time I learned to 
conform myself more to their way of living. I have 
never since had that aversion to company, and going out 
with them, which used to make them regard me with 
less fondness than they would have wished to show. I 
impute all that I had to complain of in their neglect to 
my having been a little unsociable, uncompanionable 
mortal. I lived in this manner for a year or two, 
passing my time between our house and the lady's who 
so kindly took me in hand, till, by her advice, I was 
sent to this school ; where I have told you, ladies, 
what, for fear of ridicule, I never ventured to tell any 
person besides, — the story of my foolish and naughty 
fancy. 



384 SUSAN YATES 



SUSAN YATES; 

OK, FIRST GOING TO CHURCH. 

I was born and brought up in a house in which my 
parents had all their lives resided, which stood in the 
midst of that lonely tract of land called the Lincolnshire 
Fens. Few families besides our own lived near the 
spot ; both because it was reckoned an unwholesome 
air, and because its distance from any town or market 
made it an inconvenient situation. My father was in 
no very affluent circumstances ; and it was a sad neces- 
sity which he was put to, of having to go many miles 
to fetch any thing from the nearest village, which was 
full seven miles distant, through a sad, miry way, that 
at all times made it heavy walking, and, after rain, was 
almost impassable. But he had no horse or carriage 
of his own. 

The church, which belonged to the parish in which 
our house was situated, stood in this village ; and its dis- 
tance being, as I said before, seven miles from our house, 
made it quite an impossible thing for my mother or me 
to think of going to it. Sometimes, indeed, on a fine 
dry Sunday, my father would rise early, and take a walk 
to the village, just to see how goodness thrived, as he 
used to say ; but he would generally return tired, and the 
worse for his walk. It is scarcely possible to explain to 
any one who has not lived in the fens what difficult and 
dangerous walking it is. A mile is as good as four, 



OR, FIRST GOING TO CHURCH. 385 

I have heard my father say, in those parts. My mother, 
who, in the early part of her life, had lived in a more 
civilized spot, and had been used to constant church- 
going, would often lament her situation. It was from 
her I early imbibed a great curiosity and anxiety to see 
that thing which I had heard her call a church, and so 
often lament that she could never go to. I had seen 
houses of various structures, and had seen in pictures 
the shapes of ships and boats, and palaces and temples, 
but never rightly any thing that could be called a church, 
or that could satisfy me about its form. Sometimes I 
thought it must be like our house ; and sometimes I fan- 
cied it must be more like the house of our neighbor, 
Mr. Sutton, which was bigger and handsomer than ours. 
Sometimes I thought it was a great hollow cave, such 
as I have heard my father say the first inhabitants of the 
earth dwelt in. Then I thought it was like a wagon 
or a cart, and that it must be something movable. The 
shape of it ran in my mind strangely ; and one day I 
ventured to ask my mother, what was that foolish thing 
she was always longing to go to, and which she called 
a church. Was it any thing to eat or drink ? or was it 
only like a great huge plaything, to be seen and stared 
at ? I was not quite five years of age when I made this 
inquiry. 

This question, so oddly put, made my mother smile : 
but, in a little time, she put on a more grave look, and 
informed me that a church was nothing that I had sup- 
posed it ; but it was a great building, far greater than 
any house which I had seen, where men and women 
and children came together twice a day, on Sundays, to 
hear the Bible read, and make good resolutions for the 

25 



386 SUSAN YATES ; 

week to come. She told me that the fine music which 
we sometimes heard in the air came from the bells of 
St. Mary's Church, and that we never heard it but 
when the wind was in a particular point. This raised 
my wonder more than all the rest ; for I had somehow 
conceived that the noise which I heard was occasioned 
by birds up in the air, or that it was made by the angels, 
whom (so ignorant I was till that time) I had always 
considered to be a sort of birds : for, before this time, 
I was totally ignorant of any thing like religion ; it being 
a principle of my father, that young heads should not 
be told too many things at once, for fear they should 
get confused ideas, and no clear notions of any thing. 
We had always, indeed, so far observed Sundays, that 
no work was done upon that day ; and upon that day I 
wore my best muslin frock, and was not allowed to sing 
or to be noisy : but I never understood why that day 
should differ from any other. We had no public meet- 
ings : indeed, the few straggling houses which were near 
us would have furnished but a slender congregation ; 
and the loneliness of the place we lived in, instead of 
making us more sociable, and drawing us closer toge- 
ther, as my mother used to say it ought to have done, 
seemed to have the effect of making us more distant, 
and averse to society, than other people. One or two 
good neighbors, indeed, we had, but not in numbers to 
give me an idea of church attendance. 

But now my mother thought it high time to give me 
some clearer instruction in the main points of religion ; 
and my father came readily into her plan. I was now 
permitted to sit up half an hour later on Sunday even- 
ing, that I might hear a portion of Scripture read, which 



OR, FIRST GOIXG TO CHURCH. 387 

had always been their custom ; though, by reason of my 
tender age, and my father's opinion on the impropriety 
of children being taught too young, I had never till 
now been an auditor. I was taught my prayers, and 
those things which you, ladies, I doubt not, had the 
benefit of being instructed in at a much earlier age. 

The clearer my notions on these points became, they 
only made me more passionately long for the privilege 
of joining in that social service from which it seemed 
that we alone, of all the inhabitants of the land, were 
debarred ; and, when the wind was in that point which 
enabled the sound of the distant bells of St. Mary's to 
be heard over the great moor which skirted our house, 
I have stood out in the air to catch the sounds, which I 
almost devoured : and the tears have come into my eyes, 
when sometimes they seemed to speak to me, almost in 
articulate sounds, to come to church, and because of the 
great moor which was between me and them I could 
not come ; and the too tender apprehensions of these 
things have filled me with a religious melancholy. 
With thoughts like these, I entered into my seventh 
year. 

And now the time was come, when the great moor 
was no longer to separate me from the object of my 
wishes and of my curiosity. My father having some 
money left him by the will of a deceased relation, we 
ventured to set up a sort of a carriage : no very superb 
one, I assure you, ladies ; but, in that part of the world, 
it was looked upon with some envy by our poorer 
neighbors. The first party of pleasure which my father 
proposed to take in it was to the village where I had 
so often wished to go ; and my mother and I were to 



388 SUSAN YATES ; 

accompany him : for it was very fit, my father observed, 
that little Susan should go to church, and learn how to 
behave herself; for we might sometime or other have 
occasion to live in London, and not always be confined 
to that out-of-the-way spot. 

It was on a Sunday morning that we set out, my little 
heart beating with almost breathless expectation. The 
day was fine, and the roads as good as they ever are in 
those parts. I was so happy and so proud ! I was lost 
in dreams of what I was going to see. At length, the 
tall steeple of St. Mary's Church came in view. It was 
pointed out to me by my father as the place from which 
that music had come which I had heard over the moor, 
and fancied to be angels singing. I was wound up to 
the highest pitch of delight at having visibly presented 
to me the spot from which had proceeded that unknown 
friendly music ; and when it began to peal, just as we 
approached the village, it seemed to speak, " Susan is 
come!" as plainly as it used to invite me to come when I 
heard it over the moor. I pass over our alighting at 
the house of a relation, and all that passed till I went 
with my father and mother to church. 

St. Mary's Church is a great church for such a small 
village as it stands in. My father said it had been a 
cathedral, and that it had once belonged to a monastery ; 
but the monks were all gone. Over the door, there 
was stone-work representing the saints and bishops ; 
and here and there, along the sides of the church, there 
were figures of men's heads, made in a strange, gro- 
tesque way. I have since seen the same sort of figures 
in the round tower of the Temple Church in London. 
My father said they were very improper ornaments for 



OR, FIRST GOING TO CHURCH. 389 

such a place ; and so I now think them : but it seems 
the people who built these great churches, in old times, 
gave themselves more liberties than they do now ; and 
I remember, that when I first saw them, and before 
my father had made this observation, though they were 
so ugly and out of shape, and some of them seemed to 
be grinning, and distorting their features with pain or 
with laughter, yet, being placed upon a church to which 
I had come with such serious thoughts, I could not help 
thinking they had some serious meaning ; . and I looked 
at them with wonder, but without any temptation to 
laugh. I somehow fancied they were the representation 
of wicked people, set up as a warning. 

When we got into the church, the service was not 
begun; and my father kindly took me round to show 
me the monuments, and every thing else remarkable. 
I remember seeing one of a venerable figure, which 
my father said had been a judge. The figure was 
kneeling, as if it were alive, before a sort of desk, with 
a book, I suppose the Bible, lying on it. I somehow 
fancied the figure had a sort of life in it, it seemed so 
natural ; or that the dead judge, that it was done for, 
said his prayers at it still. This was a silly notion : but 
I was very young, and had passed my little life in a 
remote place, where I had never seen any thing, nor 
knew any thing ; and the awe which I felt at first being 
in a church took from me all power but that of wonder- 
ing. I did not reason about any thing : I was too 
young. Now I understand why monuments are put up 
for the dead, and why the figures which are put upon 
them are described as doing the actions which they did 
in their lifetimes, and that they are a sort of pictures 



390 SUSAN YATES ; 

set up for our instruction. But all was new and sur- 
prising to me on that day, — the long windows with 
little panes, the pillars, the pews made of oak, the little 
hassocks for the people to kneel on, the form of the 
pulpit, with the sounding-board over it, gracefully 
carved in flower-work. To you, who have lived all 
your lives in populous places, and have been taken to 
church from the earliest time you can remember, my 
admiration of these things must appear strangely igno- 
rant ; but I was a lonely young creature, that had been 
brought up in remote places, where there was neither 
church, nor church-going inhabitants. I have since 
lived in great towns, and seen the ways of churches 
and of worship ; and I am old enough now to distin- 
guish between what is essential in religion, and what is 
merely formal or ornamental. 

When my father had done pointing out to me the 
things most worthy of notice about the church, the 
service was almost ready to begin : the parishioners had 
most of them entered, and taken their seats ; and we 
were shown into a pew, where my mother was already 
seated. Soon after, the clergyman entered, and the 
organ began to play what is called the Voluntary. I 
had never seen so many people assembled before. At 
first, I thought that all eyes were upon me, and that 
because I was a stranger. I was terribly ashamed and 
confused at first : but my mother helped me to find out 
the places in the Prayer-book ; and being busy about 
that took off some of my painful apprehensions. I was 
no stranger to the order of the service, having often 
read in the Prayer-book at home : but, my thoughts 
being confused, it puzzled me a little to find out the 



OR, FIRST GOING TO CHURCH. 391 

responses and other things which I thought I knew so 
well ; but I went through it tolerably well. One thing 
which has often troubled me since is, that I am afraid 
I was too full of myself, and of thinking how happy I 
was, and what a privilege it was for one that was so 
young to join in the service with so many grown people ; 
so that I did not attend enough to the instruction which 
I might have received. I remember, I foolishly applied 
every thing that was said, to myself, so as it could mean 
nobody but myself, I was so full of my own thoughts. 
All that assembly of people seemed to me as if they were 
come together only to show me the way of a church. 
Not but I received some very affecting impressions from 
some things which I heard that day : but the standing-up 
and the sitting-down of the people, the organ, the sing- 
ing, — the way of all these things took up more of my 
attention than was proper ; or I thought it did. I be- 
lieve I behaved better, and was more serious, when I 
went a second time and a third time : for now we went, 
as a regular thing, every Sunday ; and continued to do 
so, till, by a still further change for the better in my 
father's circumstances, we removed to London. Oh ! it 
was a happy day for me, my first going to St. Mary's 
Church : before that day, I used to feel like a little out- 
cast in the wilderness ; like one that did not belong to 
the world of Christian people. I have never felt like a 
little outcast since. But I never can hear the sweet 
noise of bells, that I don't think of the angels singing, 
and what poor but pretty thoughts I had of angels in 
my uninstructed solitude. 



392 ARABELLA HARDY; 



ARABELLA HARDY; 

OK, THE SEA VOYAGE. 

I was born in the East Indies. I lost my father and 
mother young. At the age of five, my relations thought 
it proper that I should be sent to England for my 
education. I was to be intrusted to the care of a young 
woman who had a character for great humanity and 
discretion ; but just as I had taken leave of my friends, 
and we were about to take our passage, the young 
woman suddenly fell sick, and could not go on board. 
In this unpleasant emergency, no one knew how to act. 
The ship was at the very point of sailing, and it was 
the last which was to sail for the season. At length, 
the captain, who was known to my friends, prevailed 
upon my relation, who had come with us to see us em- 
bark, to leave the young woman on shore, and to let me 
embark separately. There was no possibility of getting 
any other female attendant for me, in the short time 
allotted for our preparation ; and the opportunity of 
going by that ship was thought too valuable to be lost. 
No other ladies happened to be going ; and so I was 
consigned to the care of the captain and his crew, — 
rough and unaccustomed attendants for a young crea- 
ture, delicately brought up as I had been : but, indeed, 
they did their best to make me not feel the difference. 
The unpolished sailors were my nursery-maids and my 
waiting-women. Every thing was done by the captain 



OR, THE SEA VOYAGE. 393 

and the men to accommodate me, and make me easy. 
I had a little room made out of the cabin, which was to 
be considered as my room, and nobody might enter into 
it. The first mate had a great character for bravery, 
and all sailor-like accomplishments ; but with all this 
he had a gentleness of manners, and a pale, feminine 
cast of face, from ill health and a weakly constitution, 
which subjected him to some ridicule from the officers, 
and caused him to be named Betsy. He did not much 
like the appellation ; but he submitted to it the better, 
saying that those who gave him a woman's name well 
knew that he had a man's heart, and that, in the face of 
danger, he would go as far as any man. To this young 
man, whose real name was Charles Atkinson, by a 
lucky thought of the captain, the care of me was espe- 
cially intrusted. Betsy was proud of his charge ; and, 
to do him justice, acquitted himself with great diligence 
and adroitness through the whole of the voyage. From 
the beginning, I had somehow looked upon Betsy as a 
woman, hearing him so spoken of; and this reconciled 
me in some measure to the want of a maid, which I had 
been used to. But I was a manageable girl at all 
times, and gave nobody much trouble. 

I have not knowledge enough to give an account of 
my voyage, or to remember the names of the seas we 
passed through, or the lands which we touched upon, 
in our course. The chief thing I can remember (for I 
do not recollect the events of the voyage in any order) 
was Atkinson taking me upon deck to see the great 
whales playing about in the sea. There was one great 
whale came bounding up out of the sea, and then he 
would dive into it again, and then he would come up 



394 ARABELLA HARDY ; 

at a distance where nobody expected him ; and another 
whale was following after him. Atkinson said they 
were at play, and that the lesser whale loved that bigger 
whale, and kept it company all through the wide seas : 
but I thought it strange play, and a frightful kind of 
love ; for I every minute expected they would come up 
to our ship, and toss it. But Atkinson said a whale 
was a gentle creature, and it was a sort of sea-elephant ; 
and that the most powerful creatures in nature are 
always the least hurtful. And he told me how men 
went out to take these whales, and stuck long pointed 
darts into them ; and how the sea was discolored with 
the blood of these poor whales for many miles' distance : 
and I admired the courage of the men ; but I was sorry 
for the inoffensive whale. Many other pretty sights he 
used to show me, when he was not on watch, or doing 
some duty for the ship. No one was more attentive to 
his duty than he : but, at such times as he had leisure, 
he would show me all pretty sea-sights, — the dolphins 
and porpoises that came before a storm ; and all the 
colors which the sea changed to, — how sometimes it was 
a deep blue, and then a deep green, and sometimes it 
would seem all on fire. All these various appearances 
he would show me, and attempt to explain the reason 
of them to me as well as my young capacity would 
admit of. There was a lion and a tiger on board, going 
to England as a present to the king ; and it was a great 
diversion to Atkinson and me, after I had got rid of my 
first terrors, to see the ways of these beasts in their 
dens, and how venturous the sailors were in putting 
their hands through the grates, and patting their rough 
coats. Some of the men had monkeys, which ran loose 



OR, THE SEA VOYAGE. 395 

about ; and the sport was for the men to lose them, and 
find them again. The monkeys would run up the 
shrouds, and pass from rope to rope, with ten times 
greater alacrity than the most experienced sailor could 
follow them : and sometimes they would hide themselves 
in the most unthought-of places ; and, when they were 
found, they would grin, and make mouths, as if they 
had sense. Atkinson described to me the ways of these 
little animals in their native woods ; for he had seen 
them. Oh, how many ways he thought of to amuse 
me in that long voyage ! 

Sometimes he would describe to me the odd shapes 
and varieties of fishes that were in the sea ; and tell me 
tales of the sea-monsters that lay hid at the bottom, 
and were seldom seen by men ; and what a glorious 
sight it would be if our eyes could be sharpened to 
behold all the inhabitants of the sea at once, swimming 
in the great deeps, as plain as we see the gold and 
silver fish in a bowl of glass. With such notions he 
enlarged my infant capacity to take in many things. 

When in foul weather I have been terrified at the mo- 
tion of the vessel as it rocked backwards and forwards, 
he would still my fears, and tell me that I used to be 
rocked so once in a cradle ; and that the sea was God's 
bed, and the ship our cradle, and we were as safe in 
that greater motion as when we felt that lesser one in 
our little wooden sleeping-places. When the wind was 
up, and sang through the sails, and disturbed me with 
its violent clamors, he would call it music, and bid me 
hark to the sea-organ ; and with that name he quieted 
my tender apprehensions. When I have looked around 
with a mournful face at seeing all men about me, he 



396 ARABELLA HARDY; 

would enter into my thoughts, and tell me pretty stories 
of his mother and his sisters, and a female cousin that 
he loved better than his sisters, whom he called Jenny ; 
and say, that, when we got to England, I should go and 
see them ; and how fond Jenny would be of his little 
daughter, as he called me. And, with these images of 
women and females which he raised in my fancy, he 
quieted me for a while. One time, and never but once, 
he told me that Jenny had promised to be his wife, if 
ever he came to England ; but that he had his doubts 
whether he should live to get home, for he was very 
sickly. This made me cry bitterly. 

That I dwell so long upon the attention of this At- 
kinson, is only because his death, which happened just 
before we got to England, affected me so much, that he 
alone of all the ship's crew has engrossed my mind ever 
since ; though, indeed, the captain and all were singu- 
larly kind to me, and strove to make up for my uneasy 
and unnatural situation. The boatswain would pipe 
for my diversion, and the sailor-boy would climb the 
dangerous mast for my sport. The rough foremast-man 
would never willingly appear before me till he had 
combed his long black hair smooth and sleek, not to 
terrify me. The officers got up a sort of play for my 
amusement ; and Atkinson, or, as they called him, 
Betsy, acted the heroine of the piece. All ways that 
could be contrived were thought upon to reconcile me 
to my lot. I was the universal favorite : I do not 
know how deservedly ; but I suppose it was because I 
was alone, and there was no female in the ship besides 
me. Had I come over with female relations or attend- 
ants, I should have excited no particular curiosity : I 



OR, THE SEA VOYAGE. 397 

should have required no uncommon attentions. I was 
one little woman among a crew of men ; and I believe 
the homage which I have read that men universally pay 
to women was in this case directed to me, in the absence 
of all other womankind. I do not know how that 
might be ; but I was a little princess among them, and 
I was not six years old. 

I remember, the first drawback which happened to my 
comfort was Atkinson's not appearing the whole of one 
day. The captain tried to reconcile me to it by saying 
that Mr. Atkinson was confined to his cabin ; that he 
was not quite well, but a day or two would restore him. 
I begged to be taken in to see him ; but this was not 
granted. A day, and then another, came, and another, 
and no Atkinson was visible ; and I saw apparent solici- 
tude in the faces of all the officers, who nevertheless 
strove to put on their best countenances before me, and 
to be more than usually kind to me. At length, by the 
desire of Atkinson himself, as I have since learned, I 
was permitted to go into his cabin, and see him. He 
was sitting up, apparently in a state of great exhaustion : 
but his face lighted up when he saw me ; and he kissed 
me, and told me that he was going a great voyage, far 
longer than that which we had passed together, and he 
should never come back. And, though I was so young, 
I understood well enough that he meant this of his 
death ; and I cried sadly : but he comforted me, and 
told me that I must be his little executrix, and perforin 
his last will, and bear his last words to his mother and 
his sisters, and to his cousin Jenny, whom I should see 
in a short time ; and he gave me his blessing, as a father 
would bless his child ; and he sent a last kiss by me to 



398 ARABELLA HARDY ; 

all his female relations ; and he made me promise that 
I would go and see them, when I got to England. And 
soon after this he died : but I was in another part of 
the ship when he died ; and I was not told it till we got 
to shore, which was a few days after ; but they kept 
telling me that he was better and better, and that I 
should soon see him, but that it disturbed him to talk 
with any one. Oh, what a grief it was, when I learned 
that I had lost an old shipmate, that had made an irk- 
some situation so bearable by his kind assiduities ! and 
to think that he was gone, and I could never repay him 
for his kindness ! 

When I had been a year and a half in England, the 
captain, who had made another voyage to India and 
back, thinking that time had alleviated a little the sor- 
row of Atkinson's relations, prevailed upon my friends, 
who had the care of me in England, to let him introduce 
me to Atkinson's mother and sisters. Jenny was no 
more. She had died in the interval ; and I never saw 
her. Grief for his death had brought on a consumption, 
of which she lingered about a twelvemonth, and then 
expired. But in the mother and the sisters of this excel- 
lent young man I have found the most valuable friends 
I possess on this side the great ocean. They received 
me from the captain as the little protegee of Atkinson : 
and from them I have learned passages of his former 
life ; and this in particular, — that the illness of which he 
died was brought on by a wound, of which he never 
quite recovered, which he got in a desperate attempt, 
when he was quite a boy, to defend his captain against 
a superior force of the enemy which had boarded him, 
and which, by his premature valor inspiriting the men, 



OR, THE SEA VOYAGE. 399 

the j finally succeeded in repulsing. This was that 
Atkinson, who, from his pale and feminine appear- 
ance, was called Betsy : this was he whose womanly 
care of me got him the name of a woman ; who, with 
more than female attention, condescended to play the 
handmaid to a little unaccompanied orphan, that fortune 
had cast upon the care of a rough sea-captain and his 
rougher crew. 



POEMS. 



26 



POEMS. 



EXISTENCE, CONSIDERED IN ITSELF, NO BLESSING.* 

FROM THE LATIN OF PALINGENIUS. 

The poet, after a seeming approval of suicide from a consideration of the 
cares and crimes of life, finally rejecting it, discusses the negative impor- 
tance of existence, contemplated in itself, without reference to good or 
evil. 

Or these sad truths consideration had, 

Thou shalt not fear to quit this world so mad, 

So wicked : but the tenet rather hold 

Of wise Calanus and his followers old, 

Who with their own wills their own freedom wrought, 

And by self-slaughter their dismissal sought 

From this dark den of crime, this horrid lair 

Of men, that savager than monsters are ; 

And, scorning longer in this tangled mesh 

Of ills, to wait on perishable flesh, 

Did with their desperate hands anticipate 

The too, too slow relief of lingerino; fate. 

And if religion did not stay thine hand, 

And God, and Plato's wise behests, withstand, 

I would in like case counsel thee to throw 

This senseless burden off, of cares below. 

* From the " London Athenaeum," 1832. 

[403] 



404 . THE CELESTIAL MESSENGER 

Not wine, as wine, men choose, but as it came 

From such or such a vintage : 'tis the same 

With life, which simply must be understood 

A blank negation, if it be not good. 

But if 'tis wretched all, — as men decline 

And loathe the sour lees of corrupted wine, — 

'Tis so to be contemned. Merely to be 

Is not a boon to seek, or ill to flee ; 

Seeing that every vilest little thing 

Has it in common, — from a gnat's small wing, 

A creeping worm, down to the moveless stone, 

And crumbling bark from trees. Unless TO be, 

And to be blest, be one, I do not see 

In bare existence, as existence, aught 

That's worthy to be loved or to be sought. 



THE PAK1TOG SPEECH OF THE CELESTIAL MES- 
SENGER TO THE POET.* 

FROM THE LATIN OF PALINGENIUS, IN THE ZODIACUS VIT^E. 

But now time warns (my mission at an end) 
That to Jove's starry court I re-ascend ; 
From whose high battlements I take delight 
To scan your earth, diminished to the sight, 
Pendant and round, and, as an apple, small, 
Self-propt, self-balanced, and secure from fall 
By her own weight ; and how with liquid robe 
Blue Ocean girdles round her tiny globe, 

* From the " London Athenaeum," 1832. 






TO THE POET. 405 

While lesser Nereus, gliding like a snake, 
Betwixt her lands his flexile course doth take, 
Shrunk to a rivulet ; and how the Po, 
The mighty Ganges, Tanais, Ister, show 
"No bigger than a ditch which rains have swelled. 
Old Nilus' seven proud mouths I late beheld, 
And mocked the watery puddles. Hosts steel-clad 
Ofttimes I thence beheld ; and how the sad 
Peoples are punished by the fault of kings, 
Which from the purple fiend Ambition springs. 
Forgetful of mortality, they live 
In hot strife for possessions fugitive, 
At which the angels, grieve. Sometimes I trace 
Of fountains, rivers, seas, the change of place ; 
By ever-shifting course, and Time's unrest, 
The vale exalted, and the mount deprest 
To an inglorious valley ; ploughshares going 
Where tall trees reared their tops, and fresh trees grow- 
ing 
In antique postures ; cities lose their site ; 
Old things wax new. Oh ! what a rare delight 
To him, who, from this vantage, can survey 
At once stern Afric and soft Asia, 
With Europe's cultured plains, and, in their turns, 
Their scattered tribes ! — those whom the hot Crab 

burns, 
The tawny Ethiops ; Orient Indians ; 
Getulians ; ever-wandering Scythians ; 
Swift Tartan hordes ; Cilicians rapacious, 
And Parthians with black-bended bow pugnacious ; 
Sabeans incense bring ; men of Thrace ; 
Italian, Spaniard, Gaul ; and that rough race 



406 



HERCULES PACIFICATUS. 



Of Britons, rigid as their native colds ; 
With all the rest the circling sun beholds. 
But clouds and elemental mists deny 
These visions blest to any fleshly eye. 



HERCULES PACIFICATUS.* 

A TALE FROM SUIDAS. 

In days of yore, ere early Greece 

Had dreamed of patrols or police, 

A crew of rake-hells in terrorem 

Spread wide, and carried all before 'em; 

Rifled the poultry and the women, 

And held that all things were in common ; 

Till Jove's great son the nuisance saw, 

And did abate it by club law. 

Yet not so clean he made his work, 

But here and there a rogue would lurk 

In caves and rocky fastnesses, 

And shunned the strength of Hercules. 



Of these, more desperate than others, 

A pair of ragamuffin brothers 

In secret ambuscade joined forces, 

To carry on unlawful courses. 

These robbers' names — enough to shake us 

Were Strymon one, the other Cacus ; 

And, more the neighborhood to bother, 

A wicked dam they had for mother, 

* From the " Englishman's Magazine," 1831. 






HERCULES PACIFIC ATUS. 407 

Who knew their craft, but not forbid it : 

And whatsoe'er they nymmed she hid it ; 

Received them with delight and wonder 

When they brought home some special plunder ; 

Called them her darlings, and her white boys, 

Her ducks, her dildings ; all was right, boys. 

"Only," she said, "my lads, have care 

Ye fall not into Black Back's snare ; 

For, if he catch, he'll maul your corpus, 

And clapper-claw you to some purpose." 

She was, in truth, a kind of witch; 

Had grown by fortune-telling rich ; 

To spells and conjurings did tackle her, 

And read folks' dooms by light oracular, 

In which she saw as clear as daylight 

What mischief on her bairns would a-light : 

Therefore she had a special loathing 

For all that owned that sable clothing. 

Who can 'scape fate, when we're decreed to't? 

The graceless brethren paid small heed to't. 

A brace they were of sturdy fellows, 

As we may say, that feared no colors ; 

And sneered with modern infidelity 

At the old gypsy's fond credulity. 

It proved all true, though, as she'd mumbled ; 

For on a day the varlets stumbled 

On a green spot, — sit linguce fides, — 

('Tis Suidas tells it,) where Alcides, 

Secure, as fearing no ill neighbor, 

Lay fast asleep after a "Labor." 

His trusty oaken plant was near : 



408 HERCULES PACIFICATUS. 

The prowling rogues look round, and leer, 
And each his wicked wits 'gan rub, 
How to bear off the famous club ; 
Thinking that they, sans price or hire, would 
Carry't straight home, and chop for fire-wood 
'Twould serve their old dame half a winter. 
You stare ; but, faith, it was no splinter : 
I would not, for much money, spy 
Such beam in any neighbor's eye. 
The villains, these exploits not dull in, 
Incontinently fell a-pulling. 
They found it heavy, no slight matter, 
But tugged and tugged it, till the clatter 
Woke Hercules, who in a trice 
Whipt up the knaves, and, with a splice 
He kept on purpose, — which before 
Had served for giants many a score, — 
To end of club tied each rogue's head fast ; 
Strapping feet too, to keep them steadfast ; 
And pickaback them carries town wards, 
Behind his brawny back, head-downwards ; 
(So foolish calf — for rhyme, I bless X. — 
Comes nolens volens out of Essex;) 
Thinking to brain them with his dextra, 
Or string them up upon the next tree. 
That club — so equal fates condemn — 
They thought to catch has now catched them. 

Now, Hercules, we may suppose, 
Was no great dandy in his clothes ; 
Was seldom, save on Sundays, seen 
In calimanco or nankeen ; 






HERCULES PACIFICATUS. 409 

On anniversaries, would try on 
A jerkin, spick-span new, from lion ; 
Went bare for the most part, to be cool, 
And save the time of his groom of the stole. 
Besides, the smoke he had been in, 
In Stygian Gulf, had dyed his skin 
To a natural sable, — a right hell-fit, 
That seemed to careless eyes black velvet. 

The brethren from their station scurvy, 

Where they hung dangling topsy-turvy, 

With horror view the black costume ; 

And each presumes his hour is come : 

Then softly to themselves 'gan mutter 

The warning words their dame did utter ; 

Yet not so softly, but with ease 

Were overheard by Hercules. 

Quoth Cacus, " This is he she spoke of, 

Which we so often made a joke of." 

"I see," said the other; "thank our sin for't, 

'Tis Black Back, sure enough : we're in for't." 

His godship, who, for all his brag 
Of roughness, was at heart a wag, 
At his new name was tickled finely, 
And fell a-laughing most divinely. 
Quoth he, " I'll tell this jest in heaven ; 
The musty rogues shall be forgiven ; " 
So, in a twinkling, did uncase them, 
On mother-earth once more to place them. 
The varlets, glad to be unhampered, 
Made each a leg, then fairly scampered. 



410 A FRAGMENT. 



A FRAGMENT. 

[His Satanic Majesty seems to have been exceedingly popular with the 
English bards and bardlings of thirty and odd years ago. The London 
booksellers' counters were covered with " Devil's Walks," " True Devil's 
Walks," "Devil's Drives," "Devil's Progresses," "Devil's Bargains," and 
I know not how many more poems on the same renowned personage. Not 
only Southey and Coleridge chose Beelzebub for the subject of a poem, but 
even Elia sung of Satan, and told in immortal verse the true and wonderful 
history of the Devil's courtship and marriage; which Moxon published in a 
dainty little tome, with six humorous designs, price one shilling. The exact 
title of the work, the bibliographical reader will be pleased to learn, is 
" Satan in Search of a Wife ; with the whole Progress of his Courtship and 
Marriage, and who danced at the Wedding. By an Eye-witness." 

And, although the market was rather overstocked with poems concerning 
the Evil One, Lamb's little effusion had a pretty fair sale. The copyright on 
a shilling volume must have been small ; yet Elia, in a letter to Moxon, says, 
" You hinted that there might be something under ten pounds by and by 
accruing to me, — devil 1 s money (you are sanguine ; say seven pounds ten 
shillings)." 

The merits of this jeu d' esprit may be very small; indeed, I have no 
doubt that it is about the poorest thing its author ever printed : yet should 
I like to see it — because Charles Lamb wrote it. But I have not been able 
to find a copy oi " Satan in Search of a Wife." 

The following extract from the work, which I found in an old number of 
the " London Athenaeum," will, I hope, be acceptable to some of Lamb's 
readers. If we cannot get the whole cake, let us be thankful for the smallest 
bit thereof. — Editor.] 

The Devil was sick and queasy of late, 

And his sleep and his appetite failed him : 

His ears they hung down ; and his tail it was clapped 

Between his poor hoofs, like a dog that's been rapped. 

None knew what the devil ailed him. 

He tumbled and tossed on his mattress o' nights, 

That was fit for a fiend's disportal ; 

For 'twas made of the finest of thistle and thorn, 



A FRAGMENT. 411 

Which Alecto herself had gathered, in scorn 
Of the best down-beds that are mortal. 

His giantly chest in earthquakes heaved, 

With groanings corresponding ; 

And mincing and few were the words he spoke, 

While a sigh, like some delicate whirlwind, broke 

From a heart that seemed desponding. 

Now, the Devil an old wife had for his dam ; 
I think none e'er was older : 
Her years — old Parr's were nothing to them ; 
And a chicken to her was Methusalem, 
You'd say, could you behold her. 

She remembered Chaos a little child, 
Strumming upon hand-organs : 
At the birth of old Night a gossip she sat, 
The ancientest there ; and was godmother at 
The christening of the Gorgons. 

Her bones peeped through a rhinoceros' skin, 
Like a mummy through its cerement ; 
But she had a mother's heart, and guessed 
What pinched her son, whom she thus addressed 
In terms that bespoke endearment : — 

"What ails my Nicky, my darling imp, 
My Lucifer bright, my Beelze? 
My pig, my pug-with-a-curly-tail, 
You are not well : can a mother fail 
To see that which all hell see ? " 



412 FOR THE ALBUM OF MISS . 

" O mother dear ! I am dying, I fear : 
Prepare the yew and the willow, 
And the cypress black ; for I get no ease, 
By day or by night, for the cursed fleas 
That skip about my pillow." 

"Your pillow is clean, and your pillow-beer, 
For I wash'd 'em in Styx last night, son, 
And your blankets both, and dried them upon 
The brimstony banks of Acheron : 
It is not the fleas that bite, son. 

I wish my Nicky is not in love." 

K O mother, you have nicked it ! " 

And he turned his head aside with a blush : 

Not red-hot pokers, or crimson plush, 

Could half so deep have pricked it. 



FOR THE ALBUM OF MISS , FRENCH TEACHER 

AT MRS. GISBORN'S SCHOOL, ENFIELD.* 

Implored for verse, I send you what I can ; 

But you are so exact a French-woman, 

As I am told, Jemima, that I fear 

To wound with English your Parisian ear, 

And think I do your curious volume wrong, 

With lines not written in the Frenchman's tongue. 

Had I a knowledge equal to my will, 

With airy chansons I your leaves would fill ; 

* From " Blackwood's Magazine," 1829. 



TO C. ADEES, ESQ. 413 

With fables that should emulate the vein 

Of sprightly Gresset or of La Fontaine ; 

Or scenes comiques that should approach the air 

Of your favorite, renowned Moliere. 

But at my suit the Muse of France looks sour, 

And strikes me dumb ! Yet what is in my power 

To testify respect for you, I pray 

Take in plain English, — our rough Enfield way. 



TO C. ADERS, ESQ.,* 

ON HIS COLLECTION OF PAINTINGS BY THE OLD GERMAN MASTERS. 

Friendliest of men, Aders, I never come 
Within the precincts of this sacred room, 
But I am struck with a religious fear, 
Which says, " Let no profane eye enter here." 
With imagery from heaven the walls are clothed, 
Making the things of time seem vile and loathed. 
Spare saints, whose bodies seem sustained by love, 
With martyrs old in meek procession move. 
Here kneels a weeping Magdalen, less bright 
To human sense for her blurred cheeks ; in sight 
Of eyes new-touched by Heaven, more winning fair 
Than when her beauty was her only care. 
A hermit here strange mysteries doth unlock 
In desert sole, his knees worn by the rock. 
There angel harps are sounding, while below 
Palm-bearing virgins in white order go. 

* From Hone's "Year-book." 



414 TO C. ADERS, ESQ. 

Madonnas, varied with so chaste design, 
While all are different, each seems genuine, 
And hers the only Jesus : hard outline 
And rigid form, by Durer's hand subdued 
To matchless grace and sacro-sanctitude, — 
Durer, who makes thy slighted Germany 
Vie with the praise of paint-proud Italy. 

Whoever enterest here, no more presume 
To name a parlor or a drawing-room ; 
But, bending lowly to each holy story, 
Make this thy chapel and thine oratory. 






LET TEES. 



L E T T E E S. 



TO A BOOKSELLER. 

Thank you for the books.* I am ashamed to take 
tithe thus of your press. I am worse to a publisher 
than the two Universities and the British Museum. 
A. C. I will forthwith read. B. C. (I can't get out of 
the A, B, C) I have more than read. Taken altogether, 
'tis too lovely ; but what delicacies ! I like most 
"King Death;" glorious 'bove all, "The Lady with 
the Hundred Eings ; " " The Owl ; " " Epistle to What's 
his Name " f (here may be I'm partial) ; " Sit down, Sad 
Soul;" "The Pauper's Jubilee" (but that's old, and 
yet 'tis never old) ; "The Falcon; " "Felon's Wife ; '> 
damn "Madame Pasty" (but that is borrowed) ; 

Apple-pie is very good, 
And so is apple-pasty ; 

But 

Lord ! 'tis very nasty : 

but chiefly the dramatic fragments, — scarce three of 
which should have escaped my specimens, had an 
antique name been prefixed. They exceed his first. 
So much for the nonsense of poetry : now to the se- 

* " The Maid of Eloan," by Allan Cunningham; and Barry Cornwall's 
" Songs and Dramatic Fragments." 
f Charles Lamb. 

27 [417] 



418 TO J. PAYNE COLLIER. 

rious business of life. Up a court (Blandford Court) in 
Pall Mall (exactly at the back of Marlborough House) , 
with iron gate in front, and containing two houses, at 
No. 2, did lately live Leishman, my tailor. He is 
moved somewhere in the neighborhood, devil knows 
where. Pray find him out, and give him the opposite. 
I am so much better, though my head shakes in writing 
it, that, after next Sunday, I can well see P. and you. 
Can you throw B. C. in? Why tarry the wheels of 
my "Hogarth"? 

Charles Lamb. 



TO J. PAYNE COLLIER. 

The Garden of England, Dec. 10. 

Dear J. P. C. , — I know how zealously you feel 
for our friend S. T. Coleridge ; and I know that you 
and your family attended his lectures four or five years 
ago. He is in bad health, and worse mind : and, un- 
less something is done to lighten his mind, he will soon 
be reduced to his extremities ; and even these are not 
in the best condition. I am sure that you will do for 
him what you can ; but at present he seems in a mood 
to do for himself. He projects a new course, not of 
physic, nor of metaphysic, nor a new course of life, 
but a new course of lectures on Shakspeare and poetry. 
There is no man better qualified (always excepting 
number one) ; but I am pre-engaged for a series of 
dissertations on Indian and India-pendence, to be com- 
pleted, at the expense of the company, in I know not 
(yet) how many volumes foolscap folio. I am busy 






TO JOSEPH COTTLE. 419 

getting up my Hindoo mythology ; and, for the pur- 
pose, I am once more enduring Southey's curse (of 
"Kehama"). To be serious, Coleridge's state and 
affairs make me so ; and there are particular reasons 
just now, and have been any time for the last twenty 
years, why he should succeed. He will do so with a 
little encouragement. I have not seen him lately ; and 
he does not know that I am writing. 

Yours (for Coleridge's sake) in haste, 

C. Lamb. 



TO JOSEPH COTTLE. 

Dear Sir, — It is so long since I have seen or heard 
from you, that I fear that you will consider a request I 
have to make as impertinent. About three years since, 
when I was in Bristol, I made an effort to see you by 
calling at Brunswick Square ; but you were from home. 
The request I have to make is, that you would very 
much oblige me, if you have any small portrait of your- 
self, by allowing me to have it copied, to accompany a 
selection of the likenesses of " Living Bards " which 
a most particular friend of mine is making. If you have 
no objection, and would oblige me by transmitting such 
portrait, I will answer for taking the greatest care of it, 
and for its safe return. I hope you will pardon the lib- 
erty. 

From an old friend and well-wisher, 

Charles Lamb. 



420 TO JOSEPH COTTLE. 



TO THE SAME. 



Dear Sir, — My friend, whom you have obliged by 
the loan of your picture, has had it very nicely copied 
(and a very spirited drawing it is ; so every one thinks 
who has seen it). The copy is not much inferior to 
yours, done by a daughter of Joseph's, R. A. 

I accompany the picture with my warm thanks, both 
for that, and your better favor, the "Messiah," which I 
assure you I have read through with great pleasure. 
The verses have great sweetness, and a New-Testament 
plainness about them which affected me very much. I 
could just wish, that, in page 63, you had omitted the 
lines 71 and 72, and had ended the period with — 

" The willowy brook was there, but that sweet sound — 
When to be heard again on earthly ground? " 

Two very sweet lines, and the sense perfect. 
And in page 154, line 68, — 

" He spake, ' I come, ordained a world to save, 
To be baptized by thee in Jordan's wave.' " 

These words are hardly borne out by the story, and 
seem scarce accordant with the modesty with which our 
Lord came to take his common portion among the bap- 
tismal candidates. They also anticipate the beauty of 
John's recognition of the Messiah, and the subsequent 
confirmation by the Voice and Dove. 

You will excuse the remarks of an old brother bard, 
whose career, though long since pretty well stopped, 
was co-eval in its beginning with your own, and who is 
sorry his lot has been always to be so distant from you. 



I 



TO JOSEPH COTTLE. 421 

It is not likely that C. L. will see Bristol again ; but, 
if J. C. should ever visit London, he will be a most 
welcome visitor to C. L. My sister joins in cordial 
remembrances. 

Dear sir, yours truly, Charles Lamb. 



TO THE SAME. 

London, India House, May 26, 1829. 

My dear Sir, — I am quite ashamed of not having 
acknowledged your kind present earlier ; but that un- 
known something, which was never yet discovered, 
though so often speculated upon, which stands in the 
way of lazy folks answering letters, has presented its 
usual obstacle. It is not forgetfulness nor disrespect 
nor incivility, but terribly like all these bad things. 

I have been in my time a great epistolary scribbler : 
but the passion, and with it the facility, at length wears 
out ; and it must be pumped up again by the heavy 
machinery of duty or gratitude, when it should run free. 
I have read your " Fall of Cambria " with as much pleas- 
ure as I did your "Messiah." Your Cambrian poem I 
shall be tempted to repeat oftenest, as human poems 
take me in a mood more frequently congenial than 
divine. The character of Llewellyn pleases me more 
than any thing else, perhaps ; and then some of the 
lyrical pieces are fine varieties. 

It was quite a mistake that I could dislike any thing 
you should write against Lord Byron ; for I have a 
thorough aversion to his character, and a very moderate 
admiration of his genius : he is great in so little a way. 



422 TO A FARMER AND HIS WIFE. 

To be a poet is to be the man, not a petty portion of 
occasional low passion worked up in a permanent form 
of humanity. Shakspeare has thrust such rubbishly 
feelings into a corner, — the dark dusky heart of Don 
John, in the " Much Ado about Nothing." The fact is, 
I have not seen your "Expostulatory Epistle " to him. I 
was not aware, till your question, that it was out. 
I shall inquire, and get it forthwith. 

Southey is in town, whom I have seen slightly ; 
Wordsworth expected, whom I hope to see much of. I 
write with accelerated motion ; for I have two or three 
bothering clerks and brokers about me, who always 
press in proportion as you seem to be doing something 
that is not business. I could exclaim a little profanely ; 
but I think you do not like swearing. 

I conclude, begging you to consider that I feel myself 
much obliged by your kindness ; and shall be most 
happy at any and at all times to hear from you. 

Dear sir, yours truly, Charles Lamb. 



TO A FAKMER AND HIS WIFE. 

Twelfth Day, '23. 
The pig was above my feeble praise. It was a dear 
pigmy. There was some contention as to who should 
have the ears ; but, in spite of his obstinacy (deaf as 
these little creatures are to advice) , I contrived to get 
at one of them. 

It came in boots too, which I took as a favor. Gen- 
erally these pretty toes, pretty toes ! are missing ; but 
I suppose he wore them to look taller. 



TO A FARMER AND HIS WIFE. 423 

He must have been the least of his race. His little 
foots would have gone into the silver slipper. I take 
him to have been a Chinese and a female. 

If Evelyn could have seen him, he would never have 
farrowed two such prodigious volumes ; seeing how 
much good can be contained in — how small a compass ! 

He crackled delicately. 

I left a blank at the top of my letter, not being 

determined which to address it to : so farmer and 

farmer's wife will please to divide our thanks. May 

your granaries be full, and your rats empty, and your 

chickens plump, and your envious neighbors lean, and 

your laborers busy, and you as idle and as happy as the 

day is long 1 

Vive l' Agriculture ! 

How do you make your pigs so little ? 
They are vastly engaging at the age : 

I was so myself. 
Now I am a disagreeable old hog, 
A middle-aged gentleman-and-a-half. 
My faculties, thank God, are not much impaired ! 

I have my sight, hearing, taste, pretty perfect ; and 
can read the Lord's Prayer in common type, by the 
help of a candle, without making many mistakes. 

Believe me, that, while my faculties last, I shall ever 
cherish a proper appreciation of your many kindnesses 
in this way, and that the last lingering relish of past 
favors upon my dying memory will be the smack of that 
little ear. It was the left ear, which is lucky. Many 
happy returns, not of the pig, but of the New Year, 
to both ! Mary, for her share of the pig and the 
memoirs, desires to send the same. 

Yours truly, C. Lamb. 



424 TO S. T. COLERIDGE. 



TO S. T. COLERIDGE. 

THESES QU^EDAM THEOLOGIC^E. 

[The careful reader will observe that these famous theological proposi- 
tions as here given, just as they were sent to Coleridge, differ somewhat 
from the transcript of them given in the letter to Southey, published in 
Talfourd's " Life and Letters of Charles Lamb." Here you have the original 
theses themselves: there you have a revised and amended copy of them. 
The letter to Coleridge accompanying these learned and knotty questions is 
not included in any edition of Lamb's Works. " Mr. Coleridge," says Cottle, 
in his " Reminiscences of Coleridge and Southey," " at first appeared greatly 
hurt at this letter." — Editor.] 

First, Whether God loves a lying angel better than a true man ? 

Second, Whether the Archangel Uriel could affirm an untruth? and, if 
he could, whether he would ? 

Third, Whether honesty be an angelic virtue, or not rather to be reck- 
oned among those qualities which the schoolmen term virtutes minus 
splendidas t 

Fourth, Whether the higher order of Seraphim illuminati ever sneer ? 

Fifth, Whether pure intelligences can love ? 

Sixth, Whether the Seraphim ardentes do not manifest their virtues by 
the way of vision and theory ? and whether practice be not a sub-celestial 
and merely human virtue ? 

Seventh, Whether the vision beatific be any thing more or less than a 
perpetual representment to each individual angel of his own present attain- 
ments and future capabilities, somehow in the manner of mortal looking- 
glasses, reflecting a perpetual complacency and self-satisfaction? 

Eighth, and last, Whether an immortal and amenable soul may not come 
to be condemned at last, and the man never suspect it beforehand ? 

Learned Sir, my Friend, — Presuming on our long 
habits of friendship, and emboldened further by your late 
liberal permission to avail myself of your correspond- 
ence in case I want any knowledge (which I intend to 
do when I have no Encyclopedia or Ladies' Magazine 
at hand to refer to in any matter of science), I now 
6ubmit to your inquiries the above theological propo- 



TO THOMAS HOOD. 425 

sitions, to be by you defended or oppugned, or both, 
in the schools of Germany ; whither, I am told, you are 
departing, to the utter dissatisfaction of your native 
Devonshire, and regret of universal England, but to my 
own individual consolation, if, through the channel of 
your wished return, learned sir, my friend, may be 
transmitted to this our island, from those famous theo- 
logical wits of Leipsic and Gottingen, any rays of 
illumination, in vain to be derived from the home 
growth of our English halls and colleges. Finally 
wishing, learned sir, that you may see Schiller, and 
swing in a wood (vide poems), and sit upon a tun, 
and eat fat hams of Westphalia, 
I remain 
Your friend and docile pupil to instruct, 

Charles Lamb. 



TO THOMAS HOOD.* 

And what dost thou at the Priory? Cucullus non 
facit Monachum. English me that, and challenge old 
Lignum Janua to make a better. 

My old New River has presented no extraordinary 
novelties lately ; but there Hope sits every day, specu- 
lating upon traditionary gudgeons. I think she has 
taken the fisheries. I now know the reason why our 
forefathers were denominated East and West Angles. 
Yet is there no lack of spawn ; for I wash my hands in 
fishets that come through the pump every morning thick 

* Then " unrheumatizing himself" at Hastings. 



426 TO THOMAS HOOD. 

as motelings, — little things that perish untimely, and 
never taste the brook. You do not tell me of those 
romantic land bays that be as thou goest to Lover's 
Seat : neither of that little churchling in the midst of a 
wood (in the opposite direction, nine furlongs from the 
town) , that seems dropped by the Angel that was tired of 
carrying two packages ; marry, with the other he made 
shift to pick his flight to Loretto. Inquire out, and see 
my little Protestant Loretto. It stands apart from 
trace of human habitation ; yet hath it pulpit, reading- 
desk, and trim front of massiest marble, as if Robinson 
Crusoe had reared it to soothe himself with old church- 
going images. I forget its Xtian name, and what she- 
saint was its gossip. 

You should also go to No. 13, Standgate Street; a 
Baker, who has the finest collection of marine monsters 
in ten sea-counties, — sea-dragons, polypi, mer-people, 
most fantastic. You have only to name the old gentle- 
man in black (not the Devil) that lodged with him a 
week (he'll remember) last July, and he will show 
courtesy. He is by far the foremost of the savans. 
His wife is the funniest thwarting little animal ! They 
are decidedly the Lions of green Hastings. Well, I 
have made an end of my say. My epistolary time is 
gone by when I could have scribbled as long (I will not 
say as agreeable) as thine was to both of us. I am 
dwindled to notes and letterets. But, in good earnest, 
I shall be most happy to hail thy return to the waters 
of old Sir Hugh. There is nothing like inland mur- 
murs, fresh ripples, and our native minnows. 

" He sang in meads, how sweet the brooklets ran, 
To the rough ocean and red restless sands." 






TO THOMAS HOOD. 427 

I design to give up smoking ; but I have not yet fixed 
upon the equivalent vice. I must have quid pro quo; 
or quo pro quid, as Tom Woodgate would correct me. 
My service to him. C. L.* 



TO THE SAME. 

Dear Lamb, — You are an impudent varlet ; but I 
will keep your secret. We dine at Ayrton's on Thurs- 
day, and shall try to find Sarah and her two spare beds 
for that night only. Miss M. and her tragedy may be 
dished : so may not you and your rib. Health attend 
you. 

Yours, T. Hood, Esq. 

Enfield. 

Miss Bridget Hood sends love.f 

* " The letter came to hand too late for me to hunt the ' Lions ; ' but on 
a subsequent visit to the same Cinque Port with my wife, though we verified 
the little Loretto, we could not find the Baker, or even his man, howbeit we 
tried at every shop that had the least sign of bakery or cakery in its win- 
dow. The whole was a batch of fancy bread, — one of those fictions which 
the writer was apt to pass off upon his friends." — Hood. 

f The secret alluded to in this "notelet" was, that the article in the 
"Gem," entitled " The Widow," and published under Lamb's well-known 
signature, was written by Hood. 

Of course, the reader will see by the subscription, T. Hood, Esq., that 
the letter was not written by the author of the " Song of the Shirt." Miss 
Bridget Hood is Mary Lamb ; and the writer of the epistle is Charles Lamb 
himself. — Editor. 



428 TO LEIGH HUNT. 



TO LEIGH HUNT. 

Illustrezzimo Signor, — I have obeyed your man- 
date to a tittle. I accompany this with a volume ; but 
what have you done with the first I sent you? Have 
you swapped it with some lazzaroni for macaroni, or 
pledged it with a gondolierer for a passage ? Peradven- 
turi the Cardinal Gonsalvi took a fancy to it : his 
Eminence has done my Nearness an honor. 'Tis but a 
step to the Vatican. As you judge, my works do not 
enrich the workman ; but I get vat I can for 'em. 
They keep dragging me on, a poor, worn mill-horse, in 
the eternal round of the damned magazine ; but 'tis 
they are blind, not I. Colburn (where I recognize 
with delight the gay W. Honeycomb renovated) hath 
the ascendency.* I was with the Novellos last week. 
They have a large, cheap house and garden, with a 
dainty library (magnificent) without books ; but, what 
will make you bless yourself (I am too old for wonder) , 
something has touched the right organ in Yincentio at 
last. He attends a Wesley an chapel on Kingsland 
Green. He at first tried to laugh it off, — he only went 
for the singing ; but the cloven foot — I retract — the 
lamb's trotters are at length apparent. Mary Isa- 
bella attributes it to a lightness induced by his head- 
aches ; but I think I see in it a less accidental influence. 

* A series of pleasant, gossiping articles by Leigh Hunt, called " The 
Family Journal," and pretended to be written by a descendant of Mr. Spec- 
tator's friend, Will Honeycomb — Editor. 



TO LEIGH HUNT. 429 

Mr. Clark is at perfect staggers ! the whole fabric of 
his infidelity is shaken. He has no one to join him in 
his horse-insults and indecent obstreperousnesses against 
Christianity ; for Holmes (the bonny Holmes) is gone 
to Salisbury to be organist, and Isabella and the Clark 
make but a feeble quorum. The children have all 
neat little clasped pray-books ; and I have laid out 
seven shillings eight pence in Watts's Hymns for Christ- 
mas presents for them. The eldest girl alone holds 
out. She has been at Boulogne, skirting upon the vast 
focus of Atheism, and imported bad principles in patois 
French. But the strongholds are crumbling. N. ap- 
pears as yet to have but a confused notion of the Atone- 
ment. It makes him giddy, he says, to think much 
about it ; but such giddiness is spiritual sobriety. Well, 
Byron is gone ; and is now the best poet in Eng- 
land. Fill up the gap to your fancy. Barry Cornwall 
has at last carried the pretty A. S. They are just in 
the treacle-moon. Hope it won't clog his wings (gaum, 
we used to say at school). Mary, my sister, has worn 
me out with eight weeks' cold and toothache, her aver- 
age complement in the winter ; and it will not go away. 
She is otherwise well, and reads novels all day long. 
She has had an exempt year, a good year ; for which, 
forgetting the minor calamity, she and I are most 
thankful. Alsager is in a flourishing house, with wife 
and children about him, in Mecklenburg Square, — 
almost too fine to visit. Baron Field is come home 
from Sydney ; but as yet I can hear no tidings of a 
pension. He is plump and friendly; his wife, really 
a very superior woman. He resumes the bar. I have 
got acquainted with Mr. Irving, the Scotch preacher, 



430 TO MRS. SHELLEY. 

whose fame must have reached you. He is a humble 
disciple at the foot of Gamaliel S. T. C. Judge how 
his own sectarists must stare, when I tell you he has 
dedicated a book to S. T. C, acknowledging to have 
learnt more of the nature of faith, Christianity, and 
Christian Church, from him than from all the men he 
ever conversed with ! He is a most amiable, sincere, 
modest man in a room, this Boanerges in the temple. 
Mrs. Montague told him the dedication would do him 
no good. e That shall be a reason for doing it,' was 
his answer. Judge, now, whether this man be a quack. 
Dear H. , take this imperfect notelet for a letter : it 
looks so much the more like conversing on nearer 
terms. Love to all the Hunts, old friend Thornton, 
and all. Yours ever, 

C. Lamb. 



TO MRS. SHELLEY. 

Enfield, July 26, 1827. 

Dear Mrs. Shelley, — At the risk of throwing 
away some fine thoughts, I must write to say how 
pleased we were with your very kind remembering of 
us (who have unkindly run away from all our friends) 
before you go. Perhaps you are gone, and then my 
tropes are wasted. If any piece of better fortune has 
lighted upon you than you expected, but less than we 
wish you, we are rejoiced. We are here trying to like 
solitude, but have scarce enough to justify the experi- 
ment. We get some, however. The six days are our 
sabbath ; the seventh — why, Cockneys will come for a 
little fresh air, and so — 



TO MKS. SHELLEY. 431 

But by your month, or October at furthest, we hope 
to see Islington : I, like a giant refreshed with the 
leaving-off of wine ; and Mary, pining for Mr. Mox- 
on's books and Mr. Moxon's society. Then we shall 
meet. 

I am busy with a farce in two acts ; * the incidents 
tragi-comic. I can do the dialogue commey for; but 
the damned plot — I believe I must omit it altogether. 
The scenes come after one another like geese, not mar- 
shalling like cranes or a Hyde-Park review. The story 
is as simple as Gr. D., and the language plain as his 
spouse. The characters are three women to one man ; 
which is one more than laid hold on him in the " Evan- 
gely." I think that prophecy squinted towards my 
drama. 

I want some Howard Paine to sketch a skeleton of 
artfully succeeding scenes through a whole play, as the 
courses are arranged in a cookery-book : I to find wit, 
passion, sentiment, character, and the like trifles : to 
lay in the dead colors, — I'd Titianesque 'em up: to 
mark the channel in a cheek (smooth or furrowed, 
yours or mine) ; and, where tears should course, I'd 
draw the waters down : to say where a joke should 
come in or a pun be left out : to bring my personce on 
and off like a Beau Nash ; and I'd Frankenstein them 
there : to bring three together on the stage at once ; 
they are so shy with me, that T can get no more than 
two ; and there they stand till it is the time, without 
being the season, to withdraw them. 

I am teaching Emma Latin, to qualify her for a 
superior governess-ship ; which we see no prospect of 

* "The Pawnbroker's Daughter." 



432 TO THE EDITOR OF THE "TABLE-BOOK." 

her getting. 'Tis like feeding a child with chopped hay 
from a spoon. Sisyphus — his labors were as nothing 
to it. 

Actives and passives jostle in her nonsense, till a 
deponent enters, like Chaos, more to embroil the fray. 
Her prepositions are suppositions ; her conjunctions 
copulative have no connection in them ; her concords 
disagree ; her interjections are purely English " Ah ! " 
and " Oh ! " with a yawn and a gape in the same tongue ; 
and she herself is a lazy, blockheadly supine. As I 
say to her, ass in prcesenti rarely makes a wise man 
in futuro. 

But I dare say it was so with you when you began 
Latin, and a good while after. 

Good-by ! Mary's love. 

Yours truly, C. Lamb. 



TO THE EDITOR OF THE "TABLE-BOOK." 

Dear Sir, — Somebody has fairly played a hoax on 
you (I suspect that pleasant rogue M-x-n*) in sending 
the sonnet in my name, inserted in your last number. 
True it is that I must own to the verses being mine, 
but not written on the occasion there pretended ; for I 
have not yet had the pleasure of seeing the lady f in 
the part of Emmeline, and I have understood that the 
force of her acting in it is rather in the expression of 
new-born sight than of the previous want of it. The 
lines were really written upon her performance in the 

* Edward Moxon. t Miss Kelley. 



TO THE EDITOR OF THE "TABLE-BOOK." 433 

"Blind Boy," and appeared in the "Morning Chroni- 
cle " some years back. I suppose our facetious friend 
thought that they would seive again, like an old coat 
new turned. 

Yours (and his nevertheless) , 

C. Lamb. 



TO THE SAME. 

Sir, — A correspondent in your last number rather 
hastily asserts that there is no other authority than Da- 
venport's tragedy * for the poisoning of Matilda by 
King John. It oddly enough happens, that in the 
same number appears an extract from a play of Hey- 
wood's, of an older date, in two parts ; in which play 
the fact of such poisoning, as well as her identity with 
Maid Marian, are equally established. Michael Dray- 
ton also hath a legend, confirmatory (as far as poetical 
authority can go) of the violent manner of her death. 
But neither he nor Davenport confounds her with Rob- 
in's mistress. Besides the named authorities, old Fuller 
(I think) somewhere relates, as matter of chronicle 
history, that, old Fitzwalter (he is called Fitzwater 
both in Heywood and in Davenport) being banished 
after his daughter's murder (some years subsequently), 
King John, at a tournament in France, being delighted 
with the valiant bearing of a combatant in the lists, 
and inquiring his name, was told that it was his old 
faithful servant, Fitzwalter, who desired nothing more 
heartily than to be reconciled to his liege ; and an 

* " King John and Matilda," a tragedy by Robert Davenport. 
28 



434 TO P. G. PATMORE. 

affecting reconciliation followed. In the common col- 
lection, called "Robin Hood's Garland" (I have not 
seen Ritson's) , no mention is made, if I remember, of 
the nobility of Marian. Is she not the daughter 
of plain Squire Gamwell of old Gamwell Hall ? Sorry 
that I cannot gratify the curiosity of your " disembodied 
spirit " * (who as such is, methinks, sufficiently " veiled" 
from our notice) with more authentic testimonies, I 
rest 

Your humble abstracter, C. L. 



TO P. G. PATMORE. 

Dear P., — I am poorly. I have been to a funeral, 
where I made a pun, to the consternation of the rest of 
the mourners ; and we had wine. I can't describe to 
you the howl which the widow set up at proper inter- 
vals. Dash could ; for it was not unlike what he 
makes, f 

The letter I sent you was directed to the care of E. 
White, India House, for Mrs. Hazlitt ; which Mrs. Haz- 
litt, I don't yet know : but A. has taken it to France on 
speculation. Really it is embarrassing. There is Mrs. 

* The signature of the correspondent referred to in the first sentence of 
the letter. 

f Hood, in his charming " Literary Reminiscences," relates the following 
story concerning this dog and his sometime master: " I remember, in one of 
our strolls, being called to account very pompously by the proprietor of an 
Enfield villa, who asserted that my dog Dash, who never hunted any thing 
in his dog-days, had chased the sheep: whereupon Elia, taking the dog's 
part, said, very emphatically, ' Hunt lambs, sir ? why, he has never hunted 
me! ' " — Editor. 



TO P. G. PATMORE. 435 

present H., Mrs. late H., and Mrs. John H. ; and to 
which of the three Mrs. Wigginses it appertains, I 
don't know. I wanted to open it ; but it's transporta- 
tion. I am sorry you are plagued about your book. I 
would strongly recommend you to take for one story 
Massinger's " Old Law." It is exquisite. I can think 
of no other. 

Dash is frightful this morning. He whines, and 
stands up on his hind-legs. He misses Beckey, who is 
gone to town. I took him to Barnet the other day ; 
and he couldn't eat his victuals after it. Pray God his 
intellects be not slipping. 

Mary is gone out for some soles. I suppose it's no 
use to ask you to come and partake of 'em, else there's 
a steam-vessel.* 

I am doing a tragi-comedy in two acts, and have got 
on tolerably ; but it will be refused, or worse. I never 
had luck with any thing my name was put to. 

Oh, I am so poorly ! I waked it at my cousin's the 
bookbinder's, who is now with God ; or, if he is not, 
it's no fault of mine. 

We hope the frank wines do not disagree with Mrs. 
Patmore. By the way, I like her. 

Did you ever taste frogs? Get them, if you can. 
They are little Lilliput rabbits, only a thought nicer. 

Christ, how sick I am ! — not of the world, but of the 
widow's shrub. She's sworn under six thousand 
pounds ; but I think she perjured herself. She howls 
in E la; and I comfort her in B flat. You understand 
music ? 

If you haven't got " Massinger," you have nothing to 

* Mr. Patmore was then at Paris. 



436 TO P. G. PATMORE. 

do but go to the first bibliotheque you can light upon 
at Boulogne, and ask for it (Gifford's edition) ; and, if 
they haven't got it, you can have "Athalie," par Mon- 
sieur Racine, and make the best of it ! But that " Old 
Law " 's delicious ! 

" No shrimps ! " (That's in answer to Mary's ques- 
tion about how the soles are to be done.) 

I am uncertain where this wandering letter may 
reach you. What you mean by " Poste Restante," God 
knows. Do you mean I must pay the postage? So I 
do to Dover. 

We had a merry passage with the widow at the Com- 
mons. She was howling, — part howling, and part 
giving directions to the proctor, — when, crash! down 
went my sister through a crazy chair, and made the 
clerks grin ; and I grinned, and the widow tittered ; 
and then I knew that she was not inconsolable. 
Mary was more frightened than hurt. 

She'd make a good match for anybody (by "she," 
I mean the widow) . 

" If he bring but a relict away, 
He is happy, nor heard to complain." — Shenslone. 

Procter has got a wen growing out at the nape of 
his neck, which his wife wants him to have cut off: but 
I think it rather an agreeable excrescence; like his 
poetry, redundant. Hone has hanged himself for debt. 
Godwin was taken up for picking pockets. Beckey 
takes to bad courses. Her father was blown up in a 
steam - machine. The coroner found it insanity. I 
should not like him to sit on my letter.* 

* The reader, says Mr. Patmore, need not be told that all the above items 
of home-news are pure fiction. 



TO P. G. PATMORE. 437 

Do you observe my direction ? Is it Gaelic ? — clas- 
sical ? 

Do try and get some frogs. You must ask for 
" grenouilles " (green eels) . They don't understand 
" frogs ; " though it's a common phrase with us. 

If you go through Bulloign (Boulogne) , inquire if 
old Godfrey is living, and how he got home from the 
crusades. He must be a very old man now. 

If there is any thing new in politics or literature in 
France, keep it till I see you again; for I'm in no 
hurry. Chatty- Brian t (Chateaubriand) is well, I 
hope. 

I think I have no more news ; only give both our 
loves (" all three," says Dash) to Mrs. Patmore, and 
bid her get quite well, as I am at present, bating qualms, 
and the grief incident to losing a valuable relation.* 

C. L. 

Londkes, July 19, 1827. 

* In this and some of his other letters, Lamh writes very much in the 
manner in which Shakspeare's fools and jesters — in some respects the wisest 
and thoughtfulest characters in his works — talk. If his words he " light as 
air," they vent " truths deep as the centre." If the " Fool " in " Lear " had 
written letters to his friends and acquaintances, I think they would have 
marvellously resembled this epistle to Patmore ; and if, in saying this, I com- 
pliment the "Fool," I hope I do not derogate from the genius of Elia. 
Jaques, you remember, after hearing the " motley fool" moral on the time, 
declares that "motley's the only wear ; " and I opine that Lamb would con- 
sider it no small praise to be likened, in wit, wisdom, and eloquence, to 
Touchstone, or to the clown in "Twelfth Night." — Editor. 



THE END. 



Boston : Printed by John Wilson and Son. 



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